The myth of the birth of the hero; a psychological interpretation of mythology

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Nervous and Mental Disease Monograph Series No. 18

The Myth of the Birth ,of the Hero

(A Psychological interpretation of Mythology)

By

DR. OTTO RANK
of Vienna

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New York
1914

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Nervous and Mental Disease Monograph
Series, No. 18

The Myth of the Birth of the Hero

A Psychological Interpretation of Mythology

BY

DR. OTTO RANK

of Vienna

Authorized Translation by
DRS. F. ROBB1NS and SMITH ELY JELL1FFE

NEW YORK

THE JOURNAL OF NERVOUS AND MENTAL DISEASE
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TABLE OF CONTENTS.

Introduction I

Sargon 12

Moses 13

Kama 15

CEdipus 18

Paris 20

Telephos 21

Perseus 22

Gilgamos 23

Kyros 24

Tristan 38

Romulus 40

Hercules 44.

Jesus 47

Siegfried 53

Lohengrin 55

Index 95

THE MYTH OF THE BIRTH OF THE HERO
[A Psychological Interpretation of Mythology]

Introduction

The prominent civilized nations, such as the Babylonians,
Egyptians, Hebrews, and Hindoos, the inhabitants of Iran and of
Persia, the Greeks and the Romans as well as the Teutons and
others, all began at an early stage to glorify their heroes, mythical
princes and kings, founders of religions, dynasties, empires or
cities, in brief their national heroes, in a number of poetic tales
and legends. The history of the birth and of the early life of
these personalities came to be especially invested with fantastic
features, which in different nations even though widely separated
by space and entirely independent of each other present a baffling
similarity, or in part a literal correspondence. Many investigators
have long been impressed with this fact, and one of the chief
problems of mythical research still consists in the elucidation of
the reason for the extensive analogies in the fundamental out-
lines of mythical tales, which are rendered still more enigmatical
by the unanimity in certain details, and their reappearance in most
of the mythical groupings. 1

The mythological theories, aiming at the explanation of these
remarkable phenomena, are, in a general way, as follows :

(i) The " Idea of the People," propounded by Adolf Bastian 2
[1868] . This theory assumes the existence of elementary
thoughts, so that the unanimity of the myths is a necessary
sequence of the uniform disposition of the human mind, and the

1 A short and fairly complete review of the general theories of myth-
ology and its principal advocates is to be found in Wundt's " Volker-
psychologie," Vol. II, Myths and Religion. Part I [Leipzig, 1905], p. 527.

3 "Das Bestandige in den Menschenrassen und die Spielweise ihrer
Veranderlichkeit." Berlin, 1868.

1

2 OTTO RANK

manner of its manifestation, which within certain limits is iden-
tical at all times and in all places. This interpretation was
urgently advocated by Adolf Bauer 3 [1882], as accounting for
the wide distribution of the hero myths.

(2) The explanation by original community, first applied by
Th. Benfey [Pantschatantra, 1859] to the widely distributed
parallel forms of folklore and fairy tales. Originating in a
favorable locality [India] these tales were first accepted by the
primarily related [namely the Indo-Germanic] peoples, then con-
tinued to grow while retaining the common primary traits, and
ultimately radiated over the entire earth. This mode of explana-
tion was first adapted to the wide distribution of the hero myths
by Rudolf Schubert 4 [1890].

(3) The modern theory of migration, or borrowing, accord-
ing to which the individual myths originate from definite peoples
[especially the Babylonians], and are accepted by other peoples
through oral tradition [commerce and traffic], or through literary
influences. 5

The modern theory of migration and borrowing can be readily
shown to be merely a modification of Benfey's theory, necessitated
by newly discovered and irreconcilable material. The profound
and extensive research of modern investigations has shown that
not India, but rather Babylonia, may be regarded as the first
home of the myths. Moreover the mythic tales presumably did
not radiate from a single point, but travelled over and across the
entire inhabited globe. This brings into prominence the idea of
the interdependence of mythical structures, an idea which was
generalized by Braun 6 [1864], as the basic law of the nature of

s "Die Kyros Sage und Verwandtes," Sitzb. Wien. Akad., 100, 1882,

P- 495-

4 Schubert Herodots Darstellung der Cyrussage, Breslau, 1890.

5 Compare E. Stucken, " Astral mythen," Leipzig, 1896-1907, especially
Part V, " Moses." H. Lessmann, " Die Kyrossage in Europe," Wiss. beit.
z. Jahresbericht d. st'ddt. Realschule zu Charlottenburg, 1906.

*"Naturgeschichte d. Sage" Tracing all religious ideals, legends, and
systems back to their common family tree, and their primary root, 2
volumes, Munich 1864-65.

MYTH OF THE BIRTH OF THE HERO 3

the human mind : Nothing new is ever discovered as long as it is
possible to copy. The theory of the elementary thoughts, so
strenuously advocated by Bauer over a quarter of a century ago,
is unconditionally declined by the most recent investigators
[Winckler, 7 Stucken], who maintain the migration and purloining
theory.

There is really no such sharp contrast between the various
theories, and their advocates, for the theory of the elementary
thoughts does not interfere with the claims of the primary com-
mon possessions and the migration. Furthermore, the ultimate
problem is not whence and how the material reached a certain
people ; but the question is, where did it come from to begin with?
All these theories would only explain the variability and distribu-
tion, but not the origin of the myths. Even Schubert, the most
inveterate opponent of Bauer's view, acknowledges this truth, by
stating that all these manifold sagas date back to a single very
ancient prototype. But he is unable to tell us anything of the
origin of this prototype. Bauer likewise inclines to this mediat-
ing 8 view and points out repeatedly that in spite of the multiple
origin of independent tales, it is necessary to concede a most ex-
tensive and ramified purloining, as well as an original com-
munity of the concepts, in related peoples. The same conciliatory
attitude is maintained by Lessmann, in a recent publication 9
[1908], in which he rejects the assumption of the elementary
thoughts, but admits that primary relationship and purloining do
not exclude one another. As pointed out by Wundt, it must be
kept in mind, however, that the appropriation of mythical con-
tents always represents at the same time an independent mythical
construction ; because only that can be permanently retained which
corresponds to the purloiner's stage of mythological ideation. The

T Some of the important writings of Winckler will be mentioned in the
course of this article.

8 Zeitschrift f. d. Oesierr. Gym., 1891, p. 161, etc. Schubert's reply is
also found here, p. 594, etc.

Lessmann, "Object and Aim of Mythological Research," Mythol.
Bibliot., 1, Heft 4, Leipzig.

4 OTTO RANK

faint recollections of preceding narratives would hardly suffice
for the re-figuration of the same material, without the persistent
presence of the underlying motives; but precisely for this reason,
such motives may produce new contents, which agree in their
fundamental motives, also in the absence of similar associations.
(Volker-Psychologie, II Vol., 3 Part, 1909).

Leaving aside for the present the enquiry as to the mode of
distribution of these myths, the origin of the hero myth in general
is now to be investigated, fully anticipating that migration, or
borrowing, will prove to be directly and fairly positively demon-
strable, in a number of the cases. When this is not feasible,
other view points will have to be conceded, at least for the present,
rather than barricade the way to further progress by the some-
what unscientific attitude of Winckler, 10 who says: When human
beings and products, exactly corresponding to each other, are
found at remote parts of the earth, we must conclude that they
have wandered thither; whether we have knowledge of the how
or when makes no difference in the assumption of the fact itself.
] Even granting the migration of all myths, the provenance of the
first myth would still have to be explained. 11

Investigations along these lines will necessarily help to provide
a deeper insight into the contents of the myths. Nearly all
authors who have hitherto been engaged upon the interpretation
of the myths of the birth of heroes find therein a personification
of the processes of nature, following the dominant mode of
natural mythological interpretation. The new born hero is the
young sun rising from the waters, first confronted by lowering
clouds, but finally triumphing over all obstacles [Brodbeck, Zoro-
aster, Leipzig, 1893, p. 138]. The taking of all natural, chiefly the
atmospheric phenomena into consideration, as was done by the first

10 Winckler, " Die babylonische Geisteskultur in ihren Beziehungen zur
Kulturentwicklung der Menschheit," Wissenschaft u, Bildung, Vol. 15,
1907, p. 47.

u Of course no time will be wasted on the futile question as to what
this first legend may have been ; for in all probability this never had
existence, any more than a " first human couple."

MYTH OF THE BIRTH OF THE HERO 5

representatives of this method of myth interpretation; 12 or the
regarding of the myths in a more restricted sense, as astral myths
[Stucken, Winckler and others] — is not so essentially distinct, as
the followers of each individual direction believe to be the case.
Nor does it seem to be an essential progress when the purely
solar interpretation as advocated especially by Frobenius 12a was
no longer accepted and the view was held that all myths were
originally lunar myths, as done by G. Husing, in his " Contribu-
tions to the Kyros Myth" [Berlin, 1906], following out the sug-
gestion of Siecke, who [1908] 13 claims this view as the only legiti-
mate obvious interpretation also for the birth myths of the heroes,
and it is beginning to gain popularity. 14

The interpretation of the myths themselves will be taken up in
detail later on, and all detailed critical comments on the above mode
of explanation are here refrained from. Although significant, and
undoubtedly in part correct, the astral theory is not altogether
satisfactory and fails to afford an insight into the motives of myth
formation. The objection may be raised that the tracing to
astronomical processes does not fully represent the content of
these myths, and that much clearer and simpler relations might
be established through another mode of interpretation. The
much abused theory of elementary thoughts indicates a practically
neglected aspect of mythological research. At the beginning as
well as at the end of his contribution, Bauer points out how much
more natural and probable it would be to seek the reason for the

12 As an especially discouraging example of this mode of procedure
may be mentioned a contribution by the well-known natural mythologist
Schwartz, which touches upon this circle of myths, and is entitled : " Der
Ursprung der Stamm und Grundungssage Roms unter dem Reflex indo-
germanischer Mythen " [Jena, 1898].

^Frobenius, Das Zeitalter des Sonnengotten, Berlin, 1904. Siecke,
"Hermes als Mondgott," Myth. BibL, Vol. II, Pt. I, p. 48.

14 Compare for example, Paul Koch, " Sagen der Bibel und ihre Uber-
einstimmung mit der Mythologie der Indogermanen," Berlin, 1907. Com-
pare also the partly lunar, partly solar, but at any rate entirely one sided
conception of the hero myth, in Gustav Friedrich's " Grundlage, Entste-
hung und genaue Einzeldeutung der bekanntesten germanischen Marchen,
Mythen und Sagen" [Leipzig, 1909], p. 118.

O OTTO RANK

general unanimity of these myths in very general traits of the
human psyche, than in a primary community or in migration.
This assumption appears to be more justifiable as such general
movements of the human mind are also expressed in still other
forms, and in other domains, where they can be demonstrated as
unanimous.

Concerning the character of these general movements of the
human mind, the psychological study of the essential contents of
these myths might help to reveal the source from which has uni-
formly flowed at all times, and in all places, an identical content
of the myths. Such a derivation of an essential constituent, from
a common human source, has already been successfully attempted
with one of these legendary motives. Freud, in his " Dream In-
terpretation," 15 reveals the connection of the CEdipus fable
[where CEdipus is told by the oracle that he will kill his father
and marry his mother, as he unwittingly does later on] with the
two typical dreams of the father's death, and of sexual intercourse
with the mother, dreams which are dreamed by many now living.
Of King CEdipus he says that " his fate stirs us only because it
might have been our own fate ; because the oracle has cursed us
prior to our birth, as it did him. All of us, perhaps, were doomed
to direct the first sexual emotion towards the mother, the first
hatred and aggressive desire against the father ; our dreams con-
vince us of this truth. King CEdipus, who has murdered his
father Laios, and married his mother Iokaste, is merely the wish
fulfilment of our childhood." 16 The manifestation of the intimate
relation between dream and myth, — not only in regard to the
contents, but also as to the form and motor forces of this and
many other, more particularly pathological psyche structures, —
entirely justifies the interpretation of the myth as a dream of
tt he masses of the people, which I have recently shown elsewhere

15 Translated by Dr. A. A. Brill. Macmillan Co.

16 The fable of Shakespeare's Hamlet also permits of a similar inter-
pretation, according to Freud. It will be seen later on how mythological
investigators bring the Hamlet legend from entirely different view points
into the correlation of the mythical circle.

MYTH OF THE BIRTH OF THE HERO J

("Der Kiinstler," 1907). At the same time, the transference
of the method, and in part also of the results, of Freud's tech-
nique of dream interpretation to the myths would seem to be
justifiable, as was defended and illustrated in an example, by
Abraham, in his paper on "Dreams and Myths" [1909]. 17 The
intimate relations between dream and myth find further confirma-
tion in the following circle of myths, with frequent opportunity
for reasoning from analogy. /

The hostile attitude of the most modern mythological tendency
[chiefly represented by the Society for Comparative Mythological
Research] against all attempts at establishing a relation between
dream and myth 17a is for the most part the outcome of the re-
striction of the parallelization to the so-called nightmares
[ Alptraume] , as attempted in Laistner's notable book, " The
Riddle of the Sphinx," 1889, and also of ignorance of the relevant
teachings of Freud. The latter help us not only to understand
the dreams themselves, but also show their symbolism and close
relationship with all psychic phenomena in general, especially with
the day dreams or phantasies, with artistic creativeness, and with
certain disturbances of the normal psychic function. A common
share in all these productions belongs to a single psychic function^
the human imagination. It is to this imaginative faculty — of I
humanity at large rather than individual — that the modern myth
theory is obliged to concede a high rank, perhaps the first, for the
ultimate origin of all myths. The interpretation of the myths in
the astral sense, or more accurately speaking as "almanac tales,"
gives rise to the query, according to Lessmann, — in view of a
creative imagination of humanity, — if the first germ for the origin
of such tales is to be sought precisely in the processes in the

17 In Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 1912. Also collected
in this Monograph Series, No. 15.

17a Compare Lessmann (Mythol. BibL, I, 4). Ehrenreich alone (loc.
cit., p. 149) admits the extraordinary significance of dream-life for the
myth-fiction of all times. Wundt does so likewise, for individual mythical
motives.

O OTTO RANK

heavens; 18 or if, on the contrary, readymade tales of an entirely
different [but presumably psychic] origin were only subsequently
transferred to the heavenly bodies. Ehrenreich (General Myth-
ology, 1910, p. 104) makes a more positive admission: The mytho-
logic evolution certainly begins on a terrestrian soil, in so far as
experiences must first be gathered in the immediate surroundings
before they can be projected into the heavenly universe. And
Wundt tells us (loc. cit, p. 282) that the theory of the evolu-
tion of mythology according to which it first originates in the
heavens whence at a later period it descends to earth, is not
only contradictory to the history of the myth, which is unaware
of such a migration, but is likewise contradictory to the psy-
chology of myth-formation which must repudiate this transloca-
tion as internally impossible. We are also convinced that the
myths, 19 originally at least, are structures of the human faculty of
imagination, which at some time were projected for certain reasons
upon the heavens, 20 and may be secondarily transferred to the
heavenly bodies, with their enigmatical phenomena. The signifi-
cance of the unmistakeable traces which this transference has im-
printed upon the myths, as the fixed figures, and so forth, must by
no means be underrated, although the origin of these figures was
possibly psychic in character, and they were subsequently made
the basis of the almanac and firmament calculations, precisely on
account of this significance.

In a general way it would seem as if those investigators who
make use of an exclusively natural mythological mode of in-
terpretation, in any sense, were unable, in their endeavor to dis-
cover the original sense of the mythical tales, to get entirely away
from a psychological process, such as must be assumed likewise
for the creators of the myths. 20a The motive is identical, and led

19 Stucken [Mose, p. 432] says in this sense. The myth transmitted
by the ancestors was transferred to natural processes and interpreted in a
naturalistic way, not vice versa. "Interpretation of nature is a motive
in itself" [p. 633, annotation]. In a very similar way, we read in Meyer's
History of Antiquity, Vol. V, p. 48: In many cases, the natural symbolism,
sought in the myths, is only apparently present or has been secondarily

MYTH OF THE BIRTH OF THE HERO 9

to the same course in the myth creators as well as in the myth
interpretators. It is most naively uttered by one of the founders
and champions of comparative myth investigation, and of the
natural mythological mode of interpretation, for Max Miiller
points out in his "Essays" [1869] 18 that this procedure not only
invests meaningless legends with a significance and beauty of their
own, but it helps to remove some of the most revolting features
of classical mythology, and to elucidate their true meaning. This
revolt, the reason for which is readily understood, naturally
prevents the mythologist from assuming that such motives as
incest with the mother, sister or daughter; murder of father,
grandfather or brother could be based upon universal phantasies,
which according to Freud's teachings have their source in the
infantile psyche, with its peculiar interpretation of the external
world and its denizens. This revolt is therefore only the reaction
of the dimly sensed painful recognition of the actuality of these
relations ; and this reaction impels the interpreters of the myths,
for their own subconscious rehabilitation, and that of all mankind,
to credit these motives with an entirely different meaning from;
their original significance. The same internal repudiation prevents,
the myth-creating people from believing in the possibility of such
revolting thoughts, and this defence probably was the first reason'
for the projecting of these relations to the firmament. The
psychological pacifying through such a rehabilitation, by pro-
jection upon external and remote objects, can still be realized, up
to a certain degree, by a glance at one of these interpretations,
for instance that of the objectionable CEdipus fable, as given by a

introduced, as often in the Vedda and in the Egyptian myths; it is a
primary attempt at interpretation, like the myth-interpretations which
arose among the Greeks since the fifth century.

19 For fairy tales, in this as well as in other essential features, Thimme
advocates the same point of view as is here claimed for the myths. Com-
pare Adolf Thimme, " Das Marchen," 2d volume of the Handbucher zur
Volkskunde, Leipzig, 1909

20 Volume II of the German translation, Leipzig, 1869, p. 143.

Ma Of this myth-interpretation, Wundt has well said that it really
should have accompanied the original myth-formation. (Loc. cit., p. 352.)

IO OTTO RANK

representative of the natural mythological mode of interpretation.
(Edipus, who kills his father, marries his mother, and dies old
and blind, is the solar hero who murders his procreator, the
darkness ; shares his couch with the mother, the gloaming, from
whose lap, the dawn, he has been born, and dies blinded, as the
setting sun [Goldziher, 1876] . 21

It is intelligible that a similar interpretation is more soothing
to the mind than the revelation of the fact that incest and murder
impulses against the nearest relatives are found in the phantasies
of most people, as remnants of the infantile ideation. But this is
not a scientific argument, and revolt of this kind, although it may
not always be equally conscious, is altogether out of place, in view
of existing facts. One must either become reconciled to these
indecencies, provided they are felt to be such, or one must
abandon the study of psychological phenomena. It is evident that
human beings, even in the earliest times, and with a most naive
imagination, never saw incest and parricide in the firmament on
hign, 22 but it is far more probable that these ideas are derived
from another source, presumably human. In what way they
came to reach the sky, and what modifications or additions they
received in the process, are questions of a secondary character,
which cannot be settled until the psychic origin of the myths in
general has been established.

21 See Ignaz Goldziher, " Der Mythus bei den Hebraern und seine
geschichtliche Entwickelung " [Leipzig, 1876], p. 125. According to the
writings of Siecke ["Hermes als Mondgott," Leipzig, 1908, p. 39], the
incest myths lose all unusual features through being referred to the moon,
and its relation to the sun. The explanation being quite simple : the
daughter, the new moon, is the repetition of the mother [the old moon],
with her the father [the sun] [also the brother, the son] becomes reunited.

22 Is it to be believed? In an article entitled " Urreligion der Indoger-
manen" [Berlin, 1897], where Siecke points out that the incest myths are
descriptive narrations of the seen but inconceivable process of nature, he
objects to a statement of Oldenburg ["Religion der Veda," p. 5] who
assumes a primeval tendency of myths to the incest motive, with the
remark that in the days of yore the motive was thrust upon the narrator,
without an inclination of his own, through the forcefulness of the wit-
nessed facts.

MYTH OF THE BIRTH OF THE HERO I I

At any rate, besides the astral conception, the claims of the
part played by the psychic life must be credited with the same
rights for myth formation, and this plea will be amply vindicated
by the results of our method of interpretation. With this object
we shall first take up the legendary material on which such a
psychological interpretation is to be attempted for the first time
on a large scale; selecting from the mass 23 of these chiefly bio-
graphical hero myths those which are the best known, and some
which are especially characteristic. These myths will be given
in abbreviated form as far as relevant for this investigation, with
statements concerning the provenance. Attention will be called
to the most important, constantly recurrent motives by a differ-
ence in print.

Sargon

Probably the oldest transmitted hero myth in our possession is
derived from the period of the foundation of Babylon (about
2800 B. C), and concerns the birth history of its founder, Sargon
the First. The literal translation of the report — which according
to the mode of rendering appears to be an original inscription by
King Sargon himself — is as follows : 23a

" Sargon, the mighty king, King of Agade, am I, My mother
was a vestal, my father I knew not, while my father's brother
dwelt in the mountains. In my city Azupirani, which is situated on
the bank of the Euphrates, my mother, the vestal, bore me. In a
hidden place she brought me forth. She laid me in a vessel made
of reeds, closed my door with pitch, and dropped me down into
the river, which did not drown me. The river carried me to Akki,

23 The great variability and wide distribution of the birth myths of the
hero results from the above quoted writings of Bauer, Schubert and
others, while their comprehensive contents and fine ramifications were
especially discussed by Husing, Lessmann, and the other representatives of
the modern direction.

Innumerable fairy tales, stories, and poems of all times, up to the
most recent dramatic and novelistic literature, show very distinct indi-
vidual main motives of this myth. The exposure-romance is known to
appear in the following literary productions: The late Greek pastorals,
as told in Heliodor's " Aethiopika," in Eustathius* " Ismenias and Ismene,"
and in the Story of the two exposed children, Daphnis and Chloe. The
more recent Italian pastorals are likewise very frequently based upon the
exposure of children, who are raised as shepherds by their foster-parents,
but are later recognized by the true parents, through identifying marks
which they received at the time of their exposure. To the same set
belong the family history in Grimmelshausen's " Limplizissimus " (1665),
in Jean Paul's "Titan" (1800), as well as certain forms of the Robinson
stories and Cavalier romances (compare Wurzbach's Introduction to the
Edition of "Don Quichote" in Hesse's edition).

239 The various translations of the partly mutilated text differ only in
unessential details. Compare Hommel's " History of Babylonia and
Assyria" (Berlin, 1885), p. 302, where the sources of the tradition are
likewise found, and A. Jeremias, " The Old Testament in the Light ol
the Ancient Orient," II edition, Leipzig, 1906, p. 410.

12

MYTH OF THE BIRTH OF THE HERO 13

the water carrier. Akki the water carrier lifted me up in the
kindness of his heart, Akki the water carrier raised me as his own
son, Akki the water carrier made of me his gardener. In my
work as a gardener I was beloved by Istar, I became the king, and
for 45 years I held kingly sway."

Moses

The biblical birth history of Moses, which is told in Exodus,
chapter 2, presents the greatest similarity to the S'argon legend, even
an almost literal correspondence of individual traits. 24 Already the
first chapter (22) relates that Pharaoh commanded his people to
throw into the water all sons which were born to Hebrews, while
the daughters were permitted to live; the reason for this order
being referred to the overfertility of the Israelites. The second
chapter continues as follows :

" And there went a man of the house of Levi, and took to wife
a daughter of Levi. And the woman conceived, and bare a son :
and when she saw him that he was a goodly child, she hid him
three months. And when she could no longer hide him, she took
for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with
pitch, and put the child therein ; and she laid it in the flags by the
river's brink. And his sister stood afar off to wit what would
be done to him. And the daughter of Pharaoh came down to
wash herself at the river; and her maidens walked along by the
river's side and when she saw the ark among the flags, she sent
her maid to fetch it. And when she opened it, she saw the child,
and behold the babe wept. And she had compassion on him, and

M On account of these resemblances, a dependence of the Exodus tale
from the Sargon legend has often been assumed, but apparently not
enough attention has been paid to certain fundamental distinctions, which
will be taken up in detail in the interpretation.

20 The parents of Moses were originally nameless, as were all persons
in this, the oldest account. Their names were only conferred upon them
by the priesthood. Chapter 6, 20, says : " And Amram took him
Jocabed his father's sister to wife; and she bare him Aaron and Moses"
[and their sister Miriam, IV, 26, 59]. Also compare Winckler, "History
of Israel," II, and Jeremias, 1. c, p. 408.

1 4 OTTO RANK

said, this is one of the Hebrews' children. Then said his sister to
Pharaoh's daughter, Shall I go and call to thee a nurse of the
Hebrew women, that she may nurse the child for thee? And
Pharaoh's daughter said to her, Go. And the maid went and
called the child's mother. And Pharaoh's daughter said unto her,
Take this child away, and nurse it for me, and I will give thee
wages. And the woman took the child, and nursed it. And the
child grew, and she brought him unto Pharaoh's daughter, and he
became her son. And she called his name Moses : 26 and she said,
Because I drew him out of the water."

This account is ornamented by Rabbi mythology through an
account of the events preceding Moses' birth. In the sixtieth year
after Joseph's death, the reigning Pharaoh saw in his dream an old
man, who held a pair of scales, all the inhabitants of Egypt lay on
one side, with only a sucking lamb on the other, but nevertheless
this outweighed all the Egyptians. The startled king at once
consulted the wise men and astrologers, who declared the dream
to mean that a son would be born to the Israelites, who would
destroy all Egypt. The king was frightened, and at once ordered
the death of all newborn children of the Israelites in the entire
country. On account of this tyrannical order, the Levite Amram,
who lived in Goshen, meant to separate from his wife Jocabed,
so as not to foredoom to certain death the children conceived from
him. But this resolution was opposed later on by his daughter
Miriam, who foretold with prophetic assurance that precisely the
child suggested in the king's dream would come forth from her
mother's womb, and would become the liberator of his people. 27

Amram therefore rejoined his wife, from whom he had been
separated for three years. At the end of three months, she con-

w The name, according to Winckler ("Babylonian Mental Culture,"
p. 119), means "The Water-Drawer" (see also Winckler, "Ancient
Oriental Studies," III, 468, etc.), which would still further approach the
Moses legend to the Sargon legend, for the name Akki signifies I have
drawn water.

27 Schemot Rabba, fol. 2, 4. Concerning 2, Moses 1, 22, says that
Pharaoh was told by the astrologers of a woman who was pregnant with
the Redeemer of Israel.

MYTH OF THE BIRTH OF THE HERO IS

ceived, and later on bore a boy at whose birth the entire house was
illuminated by an extraordinary luminous radiance, suggesting the
truth of the prophecy. (After Bergel, " Mythology of the He-
brews," Leipzig, 1882.)

Similar accounts are given of the birth of the ancestor of the
Hebrew nation, Abraham. He was a son of Therach — Nimrod's
captain — and Amtelai. Prior to his birth, it was revealed to King
Nimrod, from the stars, that the coming child would overthrow
the thrones of powerful princes, and take possession of their
lands. King Nimrod means to have the child killed immediately
after its birth. But when the boy is requested from Therach, he
says: Truly a son was born to me, but he has died. He then
delivers a strange child, concealing his own son in a cave under-
neath the ground, where God permits him to suck milk from a
ringer of the right hand. In this cave, Abraham is said to have
remained until the third (according to others the tenth) year of
his life. (Compare Beer, "The Life of Abraham," according to
the interpretation of Jewish traditions, Leipzig, 1859, and Aug.
Wiinsche, "From Israel's Temples of Learning," Leipzig, 1907.)
Also in the next generation, in the story of Isaac, appear the same
mythical motives. Prior to his birth King Abimelech is warned
by a dream not to touch Sarah, as this would cause woe to betide
him. After a long period of barrenness, she finally bears her son,
who (in later life, in this report) after having been destined to be
sacrificed by his own father (foster-father) Abraham, is ulti-
mately rescued by God. But Abraham casts out his own son
Ishmael, with Hagar, the boy's mother (Genesis 20, 6. See also

Bergel, loc. cit).

Karna

A close relationship with the Sargon legend is also shown in

certain features of the ancient Hindu epic 28 Mahabharata, of the

birth of the hero Karna. The contents of the legend are briefly

rendered by Lassen ("Indische Altertumskunde," I, p. 63 ). 29

20 The Hindu birth legend of the mythical king Vikramadita must also
be mentioned in this connection. Here again occur the barren marriage

i6

OTTO RANK

The princess Pritha, also known as Kunti, bore as a virgin the
boy Kama, whose father was the sun god Surya. The young
Kama was born with the golden ear ornaments of his father and
with an unbreakable coat of mail. The mother in her distress
concealed and exposed the boy. In the adaptation of the myth by
A. Holtzmann, 30 verse 1458 reads : " Then my nurse and I made a
large basket of rushes, placed a lid thereon, and lined it with wax;
into this basket I laid the boy and carried him down to the river
Acva." Floating on the waves, the basket reaches the river Ganga
and travels as far as the city of Campa. "There was passing
along the bank of the river, the charioteer, the noble friend of
Dhrtarastra, and with him was Radha, his beautiful and pious
spouse. She was wrapt in deep sorrow, because no son had been
given to her. On the river she saw the basket, which the waves
carried close to her on the shore ; she showed it to Azirath, who
went and drew it forth from the waves." The two take care of
the boy and raise him as their own child.

Kunti later on marries King Pandu, who is forced to refrain
from conjugal intercourse by the curse that he is to die in the
arms of his spouse. But Kunti bears three sons, again through
divine conception, one of the children being born in the cave of a
wolf. One day Pandu dies in the embrace of his second wife.
The sons grow up, and at a tournament which they arrange,
Kama appears to measure his strength against the best fighter,
Arjuna, the son of Kunti. Arjuna scofnngly refuses to fight the
charioteer's son. In order to make him a worthy opponent, one of
those present anoints him as king. Meanwhile Kunti has recog-
nized Kama as her son, by the divine mark, and prays him to
desist from the contest with his brother, revealing to him the
secret of his birth. But he considers her revelation as a fantastic

of the parents, the miraculous conception, ill-omened warnings, the expo-
sure of the boy in the forest, his nourishment with honey, finally the
acknowledgment by the father. (See Jiilfr, "Mongolian Fairy Tales,"
Innsbruck, 1868, p. 73, et seq.)

a " Hindu Legends," Karlsruhe, 1846, Part II, pp. 117 to 127.

80 " Hindu Legends," 1. c.

MYTH OF THE BIRTH OF THE HERO I J

tale, and insists implacably upon satisfaction. He falls in the
combat, struck by Arjuna's arrow. (Compare the detailed ac-
count in Lefmann's "History of Ancient India," Berlin, 1890,
p. 181, et seq.)

A striking resemblance of the entire structure with the Kama
legend is presented by the birth history of Ion, the ancestor of
the Ionians, of whom a relatively late tradition states the fol-
lowing : S1

Apollo, in the grotto of the rock of the Athenian Acropolis,
procreated a son with Kreusa, the daughter of Erechtheus. In
this grotto the boy was also born, and exposed ; the mother leaves
the child behind in a woven basket, in the hope that Apollo will
not leave his son to perish. On Apollo's request, Hermes carries
the child the same night to Delphi, where the priestess finds him
on the threshold of the temple in the morning. She brings the
boy up, and when he has grown into a youth makes him a servant
of the temple. Erechtheus later on gave his daughter Kreusa in
marriage to the immigrated Xuthos. As the marriage long re-
mained childless, they addressed the Delphian oracle, praying to
be blessed with progeny. The god reveals to Xuthos that the first
to meet him on leaving the sanctuary is his son. He hastens out-
side and meets the youth, whom he joyfully greets as his own son,
giving him the name Ion, which means " Walker." Kreusa re-
fuses to accept the youth as her son ; her attempt to poison him
fails, and the infuriated people turn against her. Ion is about to
attack her, but Apollo, who did not wish the son to kill his own
mother, enlightened the mind of the priestess so that she under-
stood the connection. By means of the basket in which the new-
born child had lain, Kreusa recognizes him as her son, and reveals
to him the secret of his birth.

81 See Roscher, concerning the Ion of Euripides. Where no other
source is stated, all Greek and Roman myths are taken from the Ex-
tensive Dictionary of Greek and Roman Mythology, edited by Roscher,
which also contains a list of all sources.

1 8 OTTO RANK

GEdipus

The parents of CEdipus, King Laios and his queen, Jocaste,
lived for a long time in childless wedlock. Laios, who is longing
for an heir, asks the Delphic Apollo for advice. The oracle
answers that he may have a son if he so desires; but fate has
ordained that his own son will kill him. Fearing the fulfilment of
the oracle, Laios refrains from conjugal relations, but being
intoxicated one day, he nevertheless procreates a son, whom he
causes to be exposed in the river Kithairon, barely three days
after his birth. In order to be quite sure that the child will perish,
Laios orders his ankles to be pierced. According to the account
of Sophocles, which is not the oldest, however, the shepherd who
has been intrusted with the exposure, surrenders the boy to a
shepherd of King Polybos, of Corinth, at whose court he is
brought up, according to the universal statement. Others say
that the boy was exposed in a box on the sea, and was taken from
the water by Periboa, the wife of King Polybos, as she was
rinsing her clothes by the shore. 32 Polybos brought him up as
his own son.

CEdipus, on hearing accidentally that he is a foundling, asks
the Delphian oracle for his own parents, but receives the prophecy
that he will kill his father and marry his mother. In the belief
that this prophecy refers to his foster parents, he flees from
Corinth to Thebes, but on the way unwittingly kills his father
Laios. By solving a riddle, he frees the City from the plague of
the Sphinx, a man-devouring monster, and in reward is given the
hand of Jocaste, his mother, as well as the throne of his father.
The revelation of these horrors, and the subsequent misfortune of
CEdipus, were a favorite subject for spectacular display among
the Greek tragedians.

An entire series of Christian legends have been elaborated on

32 According to Bethe, " Thebanische Heldenlieder," the exposure on
the waters was the original rendering. According to other versions, the
boy is found and raised by horse herds; according to a later myth, by a
countryman, Melibios.

MYTH OF THE BIRTH OF THE HERO 1 9

the pattern of the CEdipus myth, 32a and the summarized contents of
the Judas legend may serve as a paradigm of this group. Before
his birth, his mother Cyboread, is warned by a dream that she will
bear a wicked son, to the ruin of all his people. The parents
expose the boy in a box on the sea. The waves cast the child
ashore on the Isle of Scariot, where the childless queen finds him,
and brings him up as her son. Later on, the royal couple have a
son of their own, and the foundling, who feels himself slighted,
kills his foster brother. As a fugitive from the country, he takes
service at the court of Pilate, who made a confidant of him and
placed him above his entire household. In a fight, Judas kills a
neighbor, without knowing that he is his father. The widow of
the murdered man, namely his own mother, then becomes his wife.
After the revelation of these horrors, he repents and seeks the
Saviour, who receives him among his apostles. His betrayal of
Jesus is known from the Gospel.

The legend of St. Gregory on the Stone — the subject of the
narrative of Hartmann von Aue — represents a more complicated
type of this mythical cycle. Gregory, the child of the incestuous
union of royal lovers, is exposed by his mother in a box on the
sea, saved and raised by fishermen, and is then educated in a con-
vent for the church. But he prefers the life of a knight, is
victorious in combats, and in reward is given the hand of the
princess, his mother. After the discovery of the incest, Gregory
does penance for seventeen years, on a rock in the midst of the
sea, and he is finally made the Pope, at the command of God.
(Compare Cholevicas, "History of German Poetry, According to
the Antique Elements.")

A very similar legend is the Iranese legend of King Darab,

told by King Firdusi in the Book of Kings, and rendered by

Spiegel (Eranische Altertumskunde, II, 584). The last Kiranian

Behmen nominated as his successor his daughter and simultaneous

wife Humai ; so that his son Sasan was grieved and withdrew into

32a The entire material has been discussed by Rank in Das Inzest-
Motiv in Dichtung und Sage, 1912, Chapter X.

20 OTTO RANK

solitude. A short time after the death of her husband, Humai
gave birth to a son, whom she resolved to expose. He was placed
in a box, which was put into the Euphrates, and drifted down
stream, until it was held up by a stone, which had been placed in
the water by a tanner. The box with the child was found by him,
and he carried the boy to his wife, who had recently lost her own
child. The couple agreed to raise the foundling, and as the boy
grew up, he soon became so strong that the other children were
unable to resist him. He did not care for the work of his
father, but learned to be a warrior. His foster mother was forced
by him to reveal the secret of his origin, and he joined the army
which Humai was then sending out to fight the king of Rum. Her
attention being called to him by his bravery, Humai readily recog-
nized him as her son, and named him her successor.

Paris

Apollodorus relates of the birth of Paris: King Priamos had
with his wife Hekabe a son, named Hektor. When Hekabe was
about to bear another child, she dreamed that she brought forth
a burning log of wood, which set fire to the entire city. Priamos
asked the advice of Aisakos, who was his son with his first wife
Arisbe, and an expert in the interpretation of dreams. Aisakos
declared that the child would bring trouble upon the city, and
advised that it be exposed. Priamos gave the little boy to a
slave, who carried him to the top of Mount Ida; this man's name
was Agelaos. The child was nursed during five days by a she-
bear. When Agelaos found that he was still alive, he picked him
up, and carried him home to raise him. He named the boy Paris ;
but after the child had grown into a strong and handsome youth,
he was called Alexandros, because he fought the robbers and pro-
tected the flocks. Before long he discovered his parents. How
this came about is told by Hyginus, according to whose report
the infant is found by shepherds. One day messengers, sent by
Priamos, come to these herders to fetch a bull which is to serve

MYTH OF THE BIRTH OF THE HERO 21

as the prize for the victor in the combats arranged in commemo-
ration of Paris. They selected a bull which Paris valued so
highly that he followed the men who led the beast away, assisted
in the combats, and won the prize. This aroused the anger of
his brother Deiphobos, who threatened him with his sword, but
his sister Kassandra recognized him as her brother, and Priamos
joyfully received him as his son. The misfortune which Paris
later on brought to his family and his native city, through the
abduction of Helena, is well known from Homer's poems, as well
as their predecessors and successors, their prologue and epilogue.
A certain resemblance with the story of the birth of Paris is
presented by the poem of Zal, in Firdusi's Persian hero-myths
(translated by Schack). The first son is born to Sam, king of
Sistan, by one of his consorts. Because he had white hair, his
mother concealed the birth. But the nurse reveals the birth of
his son to the king. Sam is disappointed, and commands that the
child be exposed. The servants carry it on the top of Mount
Alburs, where it is raised by the Somurgh, a powerful bird. The
full grown youth is seen by a travelling caravan, whose members
speak of him "as whose nurse a bird is sufficient." King Sam
once sees his son in a dream, and sallies forth to seek the exposed
child. He is unable to reach the summit of the elevated rock
where he finally espies the youth. But the Somurgh bears his
son down to him, he receives him joyfully and nominates him as
his successor.

Telephos

Aleos, King of Tegea, was informed by the oracle that his
sons would perish through a descendant of his daughter. He
therefore made his daughter Auge a priestess of the goddess
Athene, and threatened her with death should she mate with a
man. But when Herakles dwelt as a guest in the sanctuary of
Athene, on his expedition against Augias, he saw the maiden, and
when intoxicated he raped her. When Aleos became aware of
her pregnancy, he delivered her to Nauplios, a rough sailor, with

22 OTTO RANK

the command to throw her into the sea. But on the way she
gave birth to Telephos, on Mount Parthenios, and Nauplios, un-
mindful of the orders he had received, carried both her and the
child to Mysia, where he delivered them to King Teuthras.

According to another version, Auge secretly brought forth as
a priestess, but kept the child hidden in the temple. When Aleos
discovered the sacrilege, he caused the child to be exposed in
the Parthenian mountains, 3213 Nauplios was instructed to sell the
mother in foreign lands, or to kill her. She was delivered by him
into the hands of Teuthras.

According to the current tradition, Auge exposes the newborn
child and escapes to Mysia, where the childless King Teuthras
adopts her as his daughter. The boy, however, is nursed by a
doe, and is found by shepherds who take him to King Korythos.
The king brings him up as his son. When Telephos has grown
into a youth he betakes himself to Mysia, on the advice of the
oracle, to seek his mother. He frees Teuthras, who is in danger
from his enemies, and in reward receives the hand of the sup-
posed daughter of the king, namely his own mother Auge. But
she refuses to submit to Telephos, and when he in his ire is about
to pierce the disobedient one with his sword, she calls on her
lover Herakles in her distress, and Telephos thus recognizes his
mother. After the death of Teuthras he becomes king of Mysia.

Perseus

Akrisios, the king of Argos, had already reached an advanced
age without having male progeny. As he desired a son, he con-
sulted the Delphian oracle, but this warned him 1 against male
descendants, and informed him that his daughter Danae would
bear a son through whose hand he would perish. In order to
prevent this, his daughter was locked up by him in an iron chatn-

326 I. In the version of Euripides, whose tragedies "Auge" and "Tele-
phos " are extant, Aleos caused the mother and the child to be thrown into
the sea in a box, but through the protection of Athene this box was carried
to the end of the Mysian River, Kaikos. There it was found by Teuthras.
who made Auge his wife and took her child into his house as his foster son.

MYTH OF THE BIRTH OF THE HERO 23

ber, which he caused to be carefully guarded. But Zeus pene-
trated through the roof, in the guise of a golden rain, and Danae
became the mother of a boy. 33 One day Akrisios heard the voice
of young Perseus in his daughter's room, and in this way learned
that she had given birth to a child. He killed the nurse, but car-
ried his daughter with her son to the domestic altar of Zeus, to
have an oath taken on the true father's name. But he refuses
to believe his daughter's statement that Zeus is the father, and
he encloses her with the child in a box?* which is cast into the sea.
The box is carried by the waves to the coast of Seriphos, where
Diktys, a fisherman, usually called a brother of King Polydektes,
saves mother and child by drawing them out of the sea with his
nets. Diktys leads the two into his house and keeps them as his
relations. Polydektes, however, becomes enamoured of the beau-
tiful mother, and as Perseus was in his way, he tried to remove
him by sending him forth to fetch the head of the Gorgon Medusa.
But against the king's anticipations Perseus accomplishes this
:difficult task, and a number of heroic deeds besides. In throwing
the discos, at play, he accidentally kills his grandfather, as fore-
told by the oracle. He becomes the king of Argos, then of Tir-
yath, and the builder of Mykene. 35

Gilgamos

Aelian, who lived about 200 A. D., relates in his "Animal
Stories " the history of a boy who was saved by an eagle?*

"Animals have a characteristic fondness for man. An eagle
is known to have nourished a child. I shall tell the entire story,

33 Later authors, including Pindar, state that Danae was impregnated,
not by Zeus, but by the brother of her father.

M Simonides of Keos (fr. 37, ed. Bergk), speaks of a casement strong
as ore, in which Danae is said to have been exposed. (Geibel, Klassisches
Liederbuch, page 52.)

BB According to Hiising, the Perseus myth in several versions is also
demonstrable in Japan. Compare also, Sydney Hartland, Legend of Per-
seus, 1894-96; 3 volumes. London.

88 Claudius Aelianus, " Historia animalium," XII, 21, translated by Fr.
Jacobs (Stuttgart, 1841).

24 OTTO RANK

in proof of my assertion. When Senechoros reigned over the
Babylonians, the Chaldean fortune-tellers foretold that the son
of the king's daughter would take the kingdom from his grand-
father; this verdict was a prophecy of the Chaldeans. The king
was afraid of this prophecy, and humorously speaking, he became
a second Akrisius for his daughter, over whom he watched with
the greatest severity. But his daughter, fate being wiser than the
Babylonian, conceived secretly from an inconspicuous man. For
fear of the king, the guardians threw the child down from the
Akropolis, where the royal daughter was imprisoned. The eagle,
with his keen eyes, saw the boy's fall, and before the child struck
the earth, he caught it on his back, bore it into a garden, and set
it down with great care. When the overseer of the place saw the
beautiful boy he was pleased with him and raised him. The boy
received the name Gilgamos, and became the king of Babylonia.
If anyone regards this as a fable, I have nothing to say, although
I have investigated the matter to the best of my ability. Also
from Achaemenes, the Persian, from whom the nobility of the
Persians is derived, I learn that he was the pupil of an eagle." 37

Kyros

The myth of Kyros, which the majority of investigators place
in the center of this entire mythical circle, without entirely suffi-
cient grounds, it would appear — has been transmitted to us in
several versions. According to the report of Herodotus (about
450 B.C.), who states (I, 95) that among four renderings known
to him, he selected the least "glorifying" version, the story of
the birth and youth of Kyros is as follows, I, 107 et seq. 37a .

Royal sway over the Medes was held, after Kyaxares, by his
son Astyages, who had a daughter named Mandane. Once he

87 It was also told of Ptolemaos, the son of Lagos and Arsinoe, that an
eagle protected the exposed boy with his wings against the sunshine, the
rain and birds of prey (loc. cit.).

87a F. E. Lange, " Herodot's Geschichten" (Reclam). Compare also
Duncker's "History of Antiquity" (Leipsig, 1880), N. 5, page 256 et
sequitur.

MYTH OF THE BIRTH OF THE HERO 25

saw, in a dream, so much water passing from her as to fill an
entire city, and inundate all Asia. He related his dream to the
dream interpreters among the magicians, and was in great fear
after they had explained it all to him. When Mandane had
grown up, he gave her in marriage, not to a Mede, his equal in
birth, but to a Persian, by name of Kambyses. This man came
of a good family and led a quiet life. The King considered him
of lower rank than a middle class Mede. After Mandane had
become the wife of Kambyses, Astyages saw another dream vision
in the first year. He dreamed that a vine grew from his daughter's
lap, and this vine overshadowed all Asia. After he had again
related this vision to the dream interpreters, he sent for his
daughter, who was with child, and after her arrival from Persia,
he watched her, because he meant to kill her offspring. For the
dream interpreters among the magicians had prophesied to him
that his daughter's son would become king in his place. In order
to avert this fate, he waited until Kyros was born, and then sent
for Harpagos, who was his relative and his greatest confidant
among the Medes, and whom he had placed over all his affairs.
Him he addressed as follows : " My dear Harpagos, I shall charge
thee with an errand which thou must conscientiously perform.
But do not deceive me, and let no other man attend to it, for all
might not go well with thee. Take this boy, whom Mandane has
brought forth, carry him home, and kill him. Afterwards thou
canst bury him, how and in whatsoever manner thou desirest."
But Harpagos made answer : " Great King, never hast thou found
thy servant disobedient, and also in future I shall beware not to
sin before thee. If such is thy will, it behooves me to carry it
out faithfully." When Harpagos had thus spoken, and the little
boy with all his ornaments had been delivered into his hands, for
death, he went home weeping. On his arrival he told his wife
all that Astyages had said to him. But she inquired, " What art
thou about to do ? " He made reply : " I shall not obey Astyages,
even if he raved and stormed ten times worse than he is doing.
I shall not do as he wills, and consent to such a murder. I have

26

OTTO RANK

a number of reasons: in the first place, the boy is my blood rela-
tive ; then, Astyages is old, and he has no male heir. Should he
die, and the kingdom go to his daughter, whose son he bids me
kill at present, would I not run the greatest danger? But the
boy must die, for the sake of my safety. However, one of Asty-
ages' men is to be his murderer, not one of mine."

Having thus spoken, he at once despatched a messenger to one
of the king's cattle herders, by name Mithradates, who, as he hap-
pened to know, was keeping his herd in a very suitable mountain
pasturage, full of wild animals. The herder's wife was also a
slave of Astyages', by name Kyno in Greek, or Spako (a bitch)
in the Medean language. When the herder hurriedly arrived,
on the command of Harpagos, the latter said to him: "Astyages
bids thee take this boy and expose him in the wildest mountains,
that he may perish as promptly as may be, and the King has
ordered me to say to thee : If thou doest not kill the boy, but let
him live, in whatever way, thou art to die a most disgraceful'
death. And I am charged to see to it that the boy is really ex-
posed." When the herder had listened to this, he took the boy,
went home, and arrived in his cottage. His wife was with child,
and was in labor the entire day, and it happened that she was just
bringing forth, when the herder had gone to the city. They were
greatly worried about each other. But when he had returned and
the woman saw him again so unexpectedly, she asked in the first
place why Harpagos had sent for him so hurriedly. But he said :
" My dear wife, would that I had never seen what I have seen
and heard in the city, and what has happened to our masters.
The house of Harpagos was full of cries and laments. This
startled me, but I entered, and soon after I had entered, I saw a
small boy lying before me, who struggled and cried and was
dressed in fine garments and gold. When Harpagos saw me, he
bid me quickly take the boy, and expose him in the wildest spot
of the mountains. He said Astyages had ordered this, and added
awful threats if I failed to do so. I took the child and went away
with it, thinking that it belonged to one of the servants, for it

MYTH OF THE BIRTH OF THE HERO 27

did not occur to me whence it had come. But on the way, I
learned the entire story from the servant who led me from the
city, and placed the boy in my hands. He is the son of Mandane,
daughter of Astyages, and Kambyses the son of Kyros; and
Astyages has ordered his death. Behold, here is the boy."

Having thus spoken, the herder uncovered the child and showed
it to her, and when the woman saw that he was a fine strong child,
she wept, and fell at her husband's feet, and implored him not to
expose it. But he said he could not do otherwise, for Harpagos
would send servants to see if this had been done; he would have
to die a disgraceful death unless he did so. Then she said again:
"If I have failed to move thee, do as follows, so that they may
see an exposed child : I have brought forth a dead child ; take it
and expose it, but the son of the daughter of Astyages we will
raise as our own child. In this way, thou wilt not be found a
disobedient servant, nor will we fare ill ourselves. Our still-born
child will be given a kingly burial, and the living child's life will
be preserved." The herder did as his wife had begged and
advised him to do. He placed his own dead boy in a basket,
dressed him in all the finery of the other, and exposed him on
the most desert mountain. Three days later he announced to Har-
pagos that he was now enabled to show the boy's cadaver. Har-
pagos sent his most faithful body guardians, and ordered the
burial of the cattle herder's son. The other boy, however, who
was known later on as Kyros, was brought up by the herder's
wife. They did not call him Kyros, but gave him another name.

When the boy was twelve years old the truth was revealed,
through the following accident He was playing on the road, with
other boys of his own age, in the village where the cattle were
kept. The boys played " King," and elected the supposed son of
kept. The boys played " King," and elected the supposed son of the
cattle herder. S7b But he commanded some to build houses, others

BTb The same " playing king " is found in the Hindoo myth of Candra-
gupta, the founder of the Maurja dynasty, whom his mother exposed after
his birth, in a vessel at the gate of a cowshed, where a herder found him

28 OTTO RANK

to carry lances ; one he made the king's watchman, the other was
charged with the bearing of messages ; briefly, each received his
appointed task. One of the boy's playmates, however, was the son
of Artembares, a respected man among the Medes, and when he
did not do as Kyros ordained, the latter made the other boys seize
him. The boys obeyed, and Kyros chastised him with severe
blows. After they let him go, he became furiously angry, as if
he had been treated improperly. He ran into the city and com-
plained to his father of what Kyros had done to him. He did
not mention the name of Kyros for he was not yet called so, but
said the cattle herder's son. Artembares went wrathfully with
his son to Astyages, complained of the disgraceful treatment, and
spoke thus : " Great king, we suffer such outrageous treatment
from thy servant, the herder's son," and he showed him his own
son's shoulders. When Astyages heard and saw this, he wished
to vindicate the boy for the sake of Artembares, and he sent for
the cattle herder with his son. When both were present, Astyages
looked at Kyros and said : " Thou, a lowly man's son, hast had
the effrontery to treat so disgracefully the son of a man whom I
greatly honor ! " But he made answer : " Lord, he has only re-
ceived his due. For the boys in the village, he being among them,
were at play, and made me their king, believing me to be the best
adapted thereto. And the other boys did as they were told, but
he was disobedient, and did not mind me at all. For this he has
received his reward. If I have deserved punishment, here I am
at your service."

When the boy spoke in this way, Astyages knew him at once.
For the features of the face appeared to him as his own, and the

and raised him. Later on he came to a hunter, where he as cow-
herder played "king" with the other boys, and as king ordered that the
hands and feet of the great criminals be chopped off. [The mutilation
motive occurs also in the Kyros saga, and is generally widely distributed.]
At his command, the separated limbs returned to their proper position.
Kanakja, who once looked on as they were at play, admired the boy, and
bought him from the hunter for one thousand Karshapana; at home he
discovered that the boy was a Maurja. (After Lassen's Indische Alter-
tumskunde, II, 196, Annotation 1.)

MYTH OF THE BIRTH OF THE HERO 2Q

answer was that of a highborn youth ; furthermore, it seemed to
him that the time of the exposure agreed with the boy's age.
This smote his heart, and he remained speechless for a while.
Hardly had he regained control over himself, when he spoke to
get rid of Artembares, so as to be able to question the cattle
herder without witnesses. " My dear Artembares," he said, " I
shall take care that neither thou nor thy son shall have cause for
complaint." Thus he dismissed Artembares. Kyros, howover, was
led into the palace by the servants, on the command of Astyages,
and the cattle herder had to stay behind. When he was all alone
with him Astyages questioned him whence he had obtained the
boy, and who had given the child into his hands. But the herder
said that he was his own son, and that the woman who had borne
him was living with him. Astyages remarked that he was very
unwise, to look out for most cruel tortures, and he beckoned the
sword bearers to take hold of him. As he was being led to
torture, the herder confessed the whole story, from beginning to
end, the entire truth, finally beginning to beg and implore forgive-
ness and pardon. Meanwhile Astyages was not so incensed
against the herder, who had revealed to him the truth, as against
Harpagos ; he ordered the sword bearers to summon him, and
when Harpagos stood before him, Astyages asked him as follows :
"My dear Harpagos, in what fashion hast thou taken the life of
my daughter's son, whom I once delivered over to thee? " Seeing
the cattle herder standing near, Harpagos did not resort to un-
truthfulness, for fear that he would be refuted at once, and so he
proceeded to tell the truth. Astyages concealed the anger which
he had aroused in him, and first told him what he had learned
from the herder ; then he mentioned that the boy was still living,
and that everything had turned out all right. He said that he had
greatly regretted what he had done to the child, and that his
daughter's reproaches had pierced his soul. " But as everything
has ended so well, send thy son to greet the newcomer, and then
come to eat with me, for I am ready to prepare a feast in honor
of the Gods who have brought all this about."

30 OTTO RANK

When Harpagos heard this, he prostrated himself on the
ground before the king, and praised himself for his error having
turned out well, and for being invited to the king's table, in com-
memoration of a happy event. So he went home, and when he
arrived there, he at once sent off his only son, a boy of about
thirteen years, telling him to go to Astyages, and to do as he was
bid. Then Harpagos joyfully told his wife what had befallen
him. But Astyages butchered the son of Harpagos when he
came, cut him to pieces, and roasted the flesh in part; another
portion of the flesh was cooked, and when everything was pre-
pared he kept it in readiness. When the hour of the meal had
come, Harpagos and the other guests arrived. A table with
sheep's meat was arranged in front of Astyages and the others,
but Harpagos was served with his own son's flesh, without the
head, and without the choppings of hands and feet, but with
everything else. These parts were kept hidden in a basket.
When Harpagos seemed to have taken his fill, Astyages asked
him if the meat had tasted good to him, and when Harpagos an-
swered that he had enjoyed it, the servants, who had been ordered
to do so, brought in his own son's covered head, with the hands
and feet, stepped up to Harpagos, and told him to uncover and
take what he desired. Harpagos did so, uncovered the basket,
and saw the remnants of his son. When he saw this, he did not
give way to his horror, but controlled himself. Astyages then
asked him if he knew of what game he had eaten; and he replied
that he knew it very well, and that whatever the king did was
well done. Thus he spoke, took the flesh that remained, and
went home with it, where he probably meant to bury it together.

This was the revenge of Astyages upon Harpagos. Concern-
ing Kyros, he took counsel, and summoned the same magicians
who had explained his dream, then he asked them how they had
at one time interpreted his vision in a dream. But they said that
the boy must become a king, if he remained alive, and did not
die prematurely. Astyages made reply : " The boy is alive, and
is here, and as he was staying in the country, the boys of the vil-

MYTH OF THE BIRTH OF THE HERO 3 1

lage elected him for their king. But he did everything like the
real kings, for he ordained to himself as the master, sword bearers,
gate keepers, messengers, and everything. How do you mean to
interpret this ? " The magicians made reply : " If the boy is alive,
and has been made king without the help of anyone, thou canst
be at ease so far as he is concerned, and be of good cheer, for he
will not again be made a king. Already several prophecies of
ours have applied to insignificant trifles, and what rests upon
dreams is apt to be vain." Astyages made reply : " Ye sorcerers,
I am entirely of your opinion that the dream has been fulfilled
when the boy was king in name, and that I have nothing more to
fear from him. Yet counsel me carefully as to what is safest
for my house and for yourselves." Then the magicians said:
" Send the boy away, that he may get out of thy sight, send him
to the land of the Persians, to his parents." When Astyages had
heard this, he was greatly pleased. He sent for Kyros, and said
to him : " My son, I have wronged thee greatly, misled by a
deceitful dream, but thy good fortune has saved thee. Now go
cheerfully to the land of the Persians; I shall give thee safe con-
duct. There wilt thou find a very different father, and a very
different mother than the herders, Mithradates and his wife."
Thus spake Astyages, and Kyros was sent away. When he ar-
rived in the house of Kambyses, his parents received him with
great joy when they learned who he was, for they believed him
to have perished at that time, and they desired to know how he
had been preserved. He told them that he had believed himself
_to be the son of the cattle herder, but had learned everything on
the way from the companions whom Astyages had sent with him.
He related that the cattle herder's wife had saved him, and praised
her throughout. The bitch (Spako) played the principal part in
his conversation. The parents took hold of this name, so that
the preservation of the child might appear still more wonderful,
and thus was laid the foundation of the myth that the exposed
Kyros was nursed by a bitch.

Later on, Kyros, on the instigation of Harpagos, stirred up

32 OTTO RANK

the Persians against the Medes. War was declared, and Kyros,
at the head of the Persians, conquered the Medes in battle. Asty-
ages was taken a prisoner alive, but Kyros did not harm him,
but kept him with him until his end. Herodotus's report con-
cludes with the words : " But from that time on the Persians and
Kyros reigned over Asia. Thus was Kyros born and raised, and
made a king."

The report of Pompeius Trogus is preserved only in the ex-
tract by Justinus. 370 Astyages had a daughter but no male heir.
In his dream he saw a vine grow forth from her lap, the sprouts
of which overshadowed all Asia. The dream interpreters de-
clared that the vision signified the magnitude of his grandson,
whom his daughter was to bear; but also his own loss of his
dominions. In order to banish this dread, Astyages gave his
daughter in marriage neither to a prominent man, nor to a Mede,
so that his grandson's mind might not be uplifted by the paternal
estate besides the maternal ; but he married her to Kambyses, a
middle-class man from the then unknown people of the Persians.
But this was not enough to banish the fears of Astyages, and he
summoned his pregnant daughter, in order to have her infant
destroyed before his eyes. When a boy had been born, he gave
him to Harpagos, his friend and confidant, to kill him. For fear
that the daughter of Astyages would take revenge upon him for
the death of her boy, when she came to reign after her father's
death, he delivered the boy to the king's herder for exposure. At
the same time when Kyros was born, a son happened to be born
also to the herder. When his wife learned that the king's child
had been exposed, she urgently prayed for it to be brought to her,
that she might look at it. Moved by her entreaties, the herder
returned to the woods. There he found a bitch standing beside
the child, giving it her teats, and keeping the beasts and birds
away from it. At this aspect he was filled with the same com-

37c Justinus, " Extract from Pompeius Trogus' Philippian History," I,
4-7. As far as results from Justinus' extract, Deinon's Persian tales
(written in the first half of the fourth century before Christ) are pre-
sumably the sources of Trogus' narrative.

MYTH OF THE BIRTH OF THE HERO 33

passion as the bitch ; so that he picked up the boy and carried him
home, the bitch following him in great distress. When his wife
took the boy in her arms, he smiled at her as if he already knew
her; and as he was very strong, and ingratiated himself with her
by his pleasant smile, she voluntarily begged the herder to (expose
her own child instead and) 37d permit her to raise the boy; be it
that she was interested in his welfare, or that she placed her hopes
on him. Thus the two boys had to exchange fates ; one was raised
in place of the herder's child, while the other was exposed instead
of the grandson of the king.

The sequel of this apparently more primitive report agrees
essentially with the relation of Herodotus.

An altogether different version of the Kyros myth is extant
in the report of a contemporary of Herodotus, Rtesias, the origi-
nal of which has been lost, but is replaced by a fragment of
Nikolaos of Damaskos. 376 This fragment from Nikolaos sum-
marizes the narrative of Ktesias, which comprised more than an
entire book in his Persian history. Astyages is said to have been
the worthiest king of the Medes, after Abakes. Under his rule
occurred the great- transmutation through which the rulership
passed from the Medes to the Persians, through the following
cause: The Medes had a law that a poor man who went to a rich
man for his support, and surrendered himself to him, had to be
fed and clothed and kept like a slave by the rich man, or in case
the latter refused to do so, the poor man was at liberty to go else-
where. In this way a boy by name of Kyros, a Mard by birth,
came to the king's servant who was at the head of the palace
sweepers. Kyros was the son of Atradates, whose poverty made
him live as a robber, and whose wife, Argoste, Kyros' mother,
made her living by tending the goats. Kyros surrendered him-
self for the sake of his daily bread, and helped to clean the palace.
As he was diligent, the foreman gave him better clothing, and

OTd The words in parenthesis are said to be lacking in certain manu-
scripts.

37e Nicol. Damasc. Frag. 66, Ctes. ; Frag. Pers., 2, 5.

34 OTTO RANK

advanced him from the outside sweepers to those who cleaned the
interior of the king's palace, placing him under their superin-
tendent. This man was severe, however, and often whipped
Kyros. He left him and went to the lamp-lighter, who liked
Kyros, and approached him to the king, by placing him among
the royal torch bearers. As Kyros distinguished himself also in
his new position, he came to Artembares, who was at the head of
the cup bearers, and himself presented the cup to the king. Ar-
tembares gladly accepted Kyros, and bade him pour the wine for
the guests at the king's table. Not long afterwards, Astyages
noticed the dexterity and nimbleness of Kyros' service, and his
graceful presentation of the wine cup, so that he asked of Artem-
bares whence this youth had come who was so skillful a cup
bearer. " O Lord," spake he, " this boy is thy slave, of Persian
parentage, from the tribe of the Mards, who has surrendered
himself to me to make a living." Artembares was old, and once
on being attacked by a fever, he prayed the king to let him stay
at home until he had recovered. " In my stead, the youth whom
thou hast praised will pour the wine, and if he should please thee,
the king, as a cup bearer, /, who am an eunuch, will adopt him as
my son!' Astyages consented, but the other confided in many
ways in Kyros as in a son. Kyros thus stood at the king's side,
and poured his wine by day and by night, showing great ability
and cleverness. Astyages conferred upon him the income of
Artembares, as if he had been his son, adding many presents, and
Kyros became a great man whose name was heard everywhere.

Astyages had a very noble and beautiful daughter, 38 whom he
gave to the Mede Spitamas, adding all Media as her dowry.
Then Kyros sent for his father and mother, in the land of the
Medes, and they rejoiced in the good fortune of their son, and
his mother told him the dream which she had at the time that she
was bearing him, while asleep in the sanctuary as she was tending
the goats. So much water passed away from her that it became

88 This daughter's name is Amytis (not Mandane) in the version of
Ktesias.

MYTH OF THE BIRTH OF THE HERO 35

as a large stream, inundating all Asia, and flowing as far as the
sea. When the father heard this, he ordered the dream to be
placed before the Chaldeans in Babylon. Kyros summoned the
wisest among them, and communicated the dream to him. He
declared that the dream foretold great good fortune to Kyros,
and the highest dignity in Asia; but Astyages must not learn of
it, " for else he would disgracefully kill thee, as well as myself
the interpreter," said the Babylonian. They swore to each other
to tell no one of this great and incomparable vision. Kyros later
on rose to still higher dignities, created his father a Satrap of
Persia, and raised his mother to the highest rank and possessions
among the Persian women. But when the Babylonian was killed
soon afterwards by Oebares, the confidant of Kyros, his wife
betrayed the fateful dream to the king, when she learned of
Kyros' expedition to Persia, which he had undertaken in prepa-
ration of the revolt. The king sent his horsemen after Kyros,
with the command to deliver him dead or alive. But Kyros
escaped them by a ruse. Finally a combat took place, terminat-
ing in the defeat of the Medes. Kyros also conquered Egbatana,
and here the daughter of Astyages and her husband Spitamas,
with their two sons, were taken prisoners. But Astyages himself
could not be found, for Amytis and Spitamas had concealed him
in the palace, under the rafters of the roof. Kyros then ordered
that Amytis, her husband, and the children should be tortured
until they revealed the hiding place of Astyages, but he came out
voluntarily, that his relatives might not be tortured on his account.
Kyros commanded the execution of Spitamas, because he had lied
in affirming to be in ignorance of Astyages' hiding place; but
Amytis became the wife of Kyros. He removed the fetters of
Astyages, with which Oebares had bound him, honored him as a
father, and made him a Satrap of the Barkanians.

A great similarity to Herodotus' version of the Kyros myth
is found in the early history of the Ifanese royal hero, Kaikhosrav,
as related by Firdusi, in the Sah-name. This myth is most ex-

36 OTTO RANK

tensively rendered by Spiegel (Eranische Altertumskunde, I, 581
et seq.). During the warfare of King Kaikaus of Baktria and
Iran, against King Afrasiab of Turan, Kaikaus fell out with his
son, Siavaksh, who applied to Afrasiab for protection and assist-
ance. He was kindly received by Afrasiab, who gave him his
daughter Feringis to wife, on the persuasion of his Wesir, Piran,
although he had received the prophecy that the son to be born of
this union would bring great misfortune upon him. Garsevaz,
the king's brother, and a near relative of Siavaksh, calumniates
the son-in-law, and Afrasiab leads an army against him. Before
the birth of his son, Siavaksh is warned by a dream, which fore-
told destruction and death to himself, but royalty to his offspring.
He therefore flies from Afrasiab, but is taken prisoner and killed,
on the command of the Sah. His wife, who is pregnant, is saved
by Piran from the hands of the murderers. On condition of
announcing at once the delivery of Feringis to the king, Piran
is granted permission to keep her in his house. The shade of the
murdered Siavaksh once comes to him in a dream, and tells him
that an avenger has been born, and Piran actually finds in the
room of Feringis a newborn boy, whom he names Kaikhosrav.
Afrasiab no longer insisted upon the killing of the boy, but he
ordered Piran to surrender the child with a nurse to the herders,
who were to raise him in ignorance of his origin. But his royal
descent is promptly revealed in his courage and his demeanor;
and as Piran takes the boy back into his home, Afrasiab becomes
distrustful, and orders the boy to be led before him. Instructed
by Piran, Kaikhosvrav plays the fool, 39 and reassured as to his

89 On the basis of this motive of simulated dementia and certain other
corresponding features Jiriczek (" Hamlet in Iran," in the Zeitschrift des
Vereins fur Volkskunde, Vol. X, 1900, p. 353) has represented the Hamlet
Saga as a variation of the Iranese myth of Kaikhosrav. This idea was
followed up by H. Lessmann ("Die Kyrossage in Europa"), who shows
that the Hamlet saga strikingly agrees in certain items, for example, in
the simulated folly, with the sagas of Brutus and of Tell. (Compare also
the protestations of Moses.) In another connection, the deeper roots of
these relations have been more extensively discussed, especially with
reference to the Tell saga. (See: Das Inzest-Motiv in Dichtung und Sage,

MYTH OF THE BIRTH OF THE HERO 37

harmlessness, the Sah dismisses him to his mother, Feringis.
Finally, Kaikhosvrav is crowned as king by his grandfather,
Kaikaus. After prolonged, complicated, and tedious combats,
Afrasiab is at last taken prisoner, with divine assistance. Kaik-
hosvrav strikes his head off, and also causes Garsivaz to be
decapitated.

A certain resemblance, although more remote, to the preceding
saga, is presented by the Iranese myth of Feridun, as told by
Firdusi in his "Persian Hero-Myths" (translated by Schack).
Zohak* the king of Iran, once sees in a dream three men of royal
tribe. Two of them are bent with age, but between them is a
younger man who holds a club, with a bull's head, in his right
hand; this man steps up to him, and fells him with his club to
the ground. The dream interpreters declared to the king that
the young hero who will dethrone him is Feridun, a scion of the
tribe of Dschemschid. Zohak at once sets out to look for the
tracks of his dreaded enemy. Feridun is the son of Abtin, a
grandson of Dschemschid. His father hides from the pursuit of
the tyrant, but he is seized and killed. Feridun himself, a boy
of tender age, is saved by his mother Firanek, who escapes with

Chapter VIII.) Attention is also directed to the story of David, as it is
told in the books of Samuel. Here again, the royal scion, David, is made
a shep'herd, who gradually rises in the social scale up to the royal throne.
He likewise is given the king's (Saul's) daughter in marriage, and the
king seeks his life, but David is always saved by miraculous means from
the greatest perils. He also evades persecution by simulating dementia
and playing the fool. The relationship between the Hamlet saga and the
David saga has already been pointed out by Jiriczek and Lessmann. The
biblical character of this entire mythical cycle is also emphasized by Jiriczek,
who finds in the tale of Siavaksh's death certain features from the Passion
of the Savior.

40 The name Zohak is a mutilation of the original Zend expression
Ashi-dahaka [Azis-dahaka], meaning pernicious serpent. (See "The Myth
of Feridun in India and Iran," by Dr. R. Roth, in the Zeltschrift der
Deutschen Morgenldndischen Gesellschaft, II, p. 216.) To the Iranese
Feridum corresponds the Hindoo Trita, whose Avestian double is Thrae-
taona. The last named form is the most predominantly authenticated;
from it was formed, by transition of the aspirated sounds, first Phreduna,
then Fredun or Af redun ; Feridun is a more recent corruption. Compare
F. Spiegel's " Eranische Altertumskunde," I, p. 537 et seq.

38 OTTO RANK

him and entrusts him to the care of the guardian of a distant
forest. Here he is suckled by the cow Purmaje. For three years
he remains in this place, but then his mother no longer believes
him safe, and she carries him to a hermit on the mountain Alburs.
Soon afterwards Zohak comes to the forest, and kills the guardian
as well as the cow.

When Feridun was sixteen years old, he came down from
Mount Alburs, learned of his origin through his mother, and
swore to avenge the death of his father and of his nurse. On
the expedition against Zohak he is accompanied by his two older
brothers, Purmaje and Kayanuseh. He orders a club to be forged
for his use, and ornaments it with the bull's head, in memory of
his foster mother the cow. With this club he smites Zohak, as
foretold by the dream.

Tristan

The argument of the Feridun story is pursued in the Tristan
saga, as related in the epic poem by Gottfried of Strassburg.
This is especially evident in the prologue of the Tristan-saga,
which is repeated later on in the adventures of the hero himself
(duplication). Riwalin, king in the land of the Parmenians, in
an expedition to the court of Marke, king of Kurnewal and Eng-
land, had become acquainted with the latter's beautiful sister,
Blancheflure, and his heart was aflame with love for her. While
assisting Marke in a campaign, Riwalin was mortally wounded
and was carried to Tintajole. Blancheflure, disguised as a beggar
maid, hastened to his sick bed, and her devoted love saved the
king's life. She fled with her lover to his native land (obstacles)
and was there proclaimed as his consort. But Morgan attacked
Riwalin's country, for the sake of Blancheflure, whom the king
entrusted to his faithful retainer Rual, because she was carrying
a child. Rual placed the queen for safekeeping in the castle of
Kaneel. Here she gave birth to a son and died, while her hus-
band fell in the battle against Morgan. In order to protect the
king's offspring from Morgan's pursuits, Rual spread the rumor

MYTH OF THE BIRTH OF THE HERO 39

that the infant had been born dead. The boy was named Tristan,
because he had been conceived and born in sorrow. Under the
care of his foster-parents, Tristan grew up, equally straight in
body and mind, until his fourteenth year, when he was kidnapped
by Norwegian merchants, who put him ashore in Kurnewal, be-
cause they feared the wrath of the gods. Here the boy was
found by the soldiers of King Marke, who was so well pleased
with the brave and handsome youth that he promptly made him
his master of the chase (career), and held him in great affection.
Meanwhile, faithful Rual had set forth to seek his abducted foster
son, whom he found at last in Kurnewal, where Rual had come
begging his way. Rual revealed Tristan's descent to the king,
who was delighted to see in him the son of his beloved sister, and
raised him to the rank of a knight. In order to avenge his
father, Tristan proceeded with Rual to Parmenia, vanquished
Morgan, the usurper, and gave the country to Rual as a liege,
while he himself returned to his uncle Marke. (After Chop:
Erlauterungen zu Wagner's Tristan, Reclam Bibl.)

The actual Tristan saga goes on with a repetition of the
principal themes. In the service of Marke, Tristan kills Morald,
the bridegroom of Isolde, and being wounded unto death, he is
saved by Isolde. He asks her hand in marriage, for his uncle
Marke, fulfils the condition of killing a dragon, and she follows
him reluctantly to Kurnewal, where they travel by ship. On the
journey they partake unwittingly of the disastrous love potion,
which binds them together in frenzied passion. They betray the
king, Marke, and on the wedding night 'Isolde's faithful serving
maid, Brangane, represents the queen, and sacrifices her virginity
to the king. Next follows the banishment of Tristan, his several
attempts to regain his beloved, although he had meanwhile
married Isolde Whitehand, who resembled her. At last he is
again wounded unto death, and Isolde arrives too late to save
him. 41

41 Compare Immermann, "Tristan tmd Isolde, Ein Gedicht in Ro-
manzen " Diisseldorf, 1841. Like the epic of Gottfried of Strassburg, his

40 OTTO RANK

A plainer version of the Tristar^saga, in the sense of the
characteristic features of the myth of the birth of the hero, is
found in the fairy tale, "The' True Bride," quoted by Riklin
("Wunscherfullung und Symbolik im Marchen," p. 56) 41a from
Rittershaus' collection of fairy tales (XXVII, p. 113). A royal
pair have no children. The king having threatened to kill his
wife, unless she bears a child by the time of his return from his
sea-voyage, she is brought to him during his journey, by his
zealous maid-servant, as the fairest of three promenading ladies,
and he takes her into his tent without recognizing her. 41b She re-
turns home without having been discovered, gives birth to a
daughter, Isol, and dies. Isol later on finds a most beautiful little
boy in a box by the seaside, whose name is Tristram, and she
raises him to become engaged to him. The subsequent story,
which contains the motive of the true bride, is noteworthy for
present purposes only in as far as here again occur the draught of
oblivion, and two Isoldes. The king's second wife gives a potion
to Tristram, which causes him to forget the fair Isol entirely, so
that he wishes to marry the black Isota. Ultimately he discovers
the deception, however, and becomes united with Isol.

Romulus.
The original version of the story of Romulus and Remus, as
told by the most ancient Roman annalist, Fabius Pictor, is ren-
dered as follows by Mommsen. 42 " The twins borne by Ilia,

poem begins with the preliminary history of the loves of Tristan's parents,
King Riwalin Kannlengres of Parmenia and Markers beautiful sister
Blancheflur. The maiden never reveals her love, which is not sanctioned
by her brother, but she visits the king, who is wounded unto death, in his
chamber, and dying he procreates Tristan, " the son of the most daring
and doleful love." Grown up as a foundling in the care of Rual and his
wife, Florete, the winsome youth Tristan introduces himself to Marke in
a stag hunt, as an expert huntsman, is recognized as his nephew by a
ring, the king's gift to his beloved sister, and becomes his favorite.

41a See translation by W. A. White, M.D., Psychoanalytic Review, Vol.
I, No. 1, et seq.

* lb Compare the substitution of the bride, through Brangane.

43 Mommsen, Th., "Die echte und die falsche Acca Larentia"; in
Festgaben fur G. Homeyer (Berlin, 1891), p. 93, et seq.; and Romische

MYTH OF THE BIRTH OF THE HERO 4 1

daughter of the preceding king Numitor, from the embrace of the

war god Mars were condemned by King Amulius, the present

ruler of Alba, to be cast into the river. The king's servants took

the children and carried them from Alba as far as the Tiber on

the Palatine Hill ; but when they tried to descend the hill to the

river, to carry out the command, they found that the river had

risen, and they were unable to reach its bed. The tub with the

children was therefore thrust by them into the shallow water at

the shore. It floated for a while; but the water promptly receded,

and knocking against a stone, the tub capsized, and the screaming

infants were upset into the river mud. They were heard by a

she-wolf who had just brought forth and had her udders full of

milk; she came and gave her teats to the boys, to nurse them, and

as they were drinking she licked them clean with her tongue.

Above them flew a woodpecker, which guarded the children, and

also carried food to them. The father was providing for his

sons: for the wolf and the woodpecker are animals consecrated

to father Mars. This was seen by one of the royal herdsmen,

who was driving his pigs back to the pasture from which the

water had receded. Startled by the spectacle, he summoned his

mates, who found the she-wolf attending like a mother to the

children, and the children treated her as their mother. The men

made a loud noise to scare the animal away; but the wolf was not

afraid; she left the children, but not from fear; slowly, without

heeding the herdsmen, she disappeared into the wilderness of the

forest, at the holy site of Faunus, where the water gushes from a

gully of the mountain. Meanwhile the men picked up the boy?

and carried them to the chief swineherd of the king, Faustulus,

for they believed that the gods did not wish the children to

perish. But the wife of Faustulus had just given birth to a

dead child, and was full of sorrow. Her husband gave her the

twins, and she nursed them; the couple raised the children, and

Forschungen (Berlin, 1879), II, p. 1, et seq. Mommsen reconstructs the
lost narrative of Fabius from the preserved reports of Dionysius (I, 79-
831, and of Plutarch (Romulus)).

4 2 OTTO RANK

named them Romulus and Remus. A'fter Rome had been
founded, later on, King Romulus built himself a house not far
from the place where his tub had stood. The gully in which the
she-wolf had disappeared has been known since that time as the
Wolf's Gully, the Lupercal. The image in ore of the she-wolf
with the twins 43 was subsequently erected at this spot, and the
she-wolf herself, the Lupa, was worshipped by the Romans as a
divinity.

The Romulus saga later on underwent manifold transmuta-
tions, mutilations, additions, and interpretations. 44 It is best
known in the form transmitted by Livy (I, 3 et seq.), where we
learn something about the antecedents and subsequent fate of the
twins.

King Proca bequeaths the royal dignity to his first born son
Numitor. But his younger brother, Amulius, pushes him from
the throne, and becomes king himself. So that no scion from
Numitor's family may arise, as the avenger, he kills the male
descendants of his brother. Rea Silvia, the daughter^ he elects
as a vestal, and thus deprives 'her of the hope of progeny, through
perpetual virginity as enjoined upon her under the semblance of
a most honorable distinction. But the vestal maiden was over-
come by violence, and having brought forth twins, she named
Mars as the father of her illegitimate offspring, be it from con-
viction, or because a god appeared more creditable to her as the
perpetrator of the crime.

The narrative of the exposure in the Tiber goes on as fol-
lows: The saga relates that the floating tub, in which the boys
had been exposed, was left on dry land by the receding waters,
and that a thirsty wolf, attracted from the neighbouring mountains
by the children's cries, offered them her teats. The boys are said
to have been found by the chief royal herder, supposedly named

43 The Capitoline She Wolf is considered as the work of very ancient
Etruscan artists, which was erected at the Lupercal, in the year 296 B. C,
according to Livy (X, 231). Compare picture on title page.

44 All these renderings were compiled by Schwegler, in his Roman
History, I, p. 384, et seq.

MYTH OF THE BIRTH OF THE HERO 43

Faustulus, who took them to the homestead of his wife, Larentia,
where they were raised. Some believe that Larentia was called
Lupa, a she-wolf, by the herders, because she offered her body,
and that this was the origin of the wonderful saga.

Grown to manhood, the youths Romulus and Remus protect
the herds against the attacks of wild animals and robbers. One
day Remus is taken prisoner by the robbers, who accuse him of
having stolen Numitor's flocks. But Numitor, to whom he is
surrendered for punishment, was touched by his tender age, and
when he learned of the twin brothers, he suspected that they
might be his exposed grarfdsons. While he was anxiously ponder-
ing the resemblance with the features of his daughter, and the
boy's age as corresponding to the time of the exposure, Faustulus
arrived with Romulus, and a conspiracy was hatched, when the
descent of the boys had been learned from the herders. The
youths armed themselves for vengeance, while Numitor took up
weapons to defend his claim to the throne he had usurped. After
Amulius had been assassinated, Numitor was re-instituted as the
ruler, and the youths resolved to found a city in the region where
they had been exposed and brought up. A furious dispute arose
upon the question which brother was to be the ruler of the newly
erected city, for neither twin was favored by the right of primo-
geniture, and the outcome of the bird oracle was equally doubtful.
The saga relates that Remus jumped over the new wall, to deride
his twin, and Romulus became so much enraged that he slew his
brother, Romulus then usurped the sole mastery, and the city
was named Rome after him.

The Roman tale of Romulus and Remus has a close counter-
part in the Greek myth of a city foundation by the twin brothers
Amphion and Zethos, who were the first to found the site of
Thebes of the Seven Gates. The enormous rocks which Zethos
brought from the mountains were joined by the music drawn
from Amphion's lute strings to form the walls which became so
famous later on. Amphion and Zethos passed as the children of

44 OTTO RANK

Zeus and Antiope, daughter of King Nykteus. She escaped
by flight from the punishment of her father, who died of grief;
on his death bed he implored his brother and successor on the
throne, Lykos, to punish the wrongdoing of Antiope. Meantime
she had married Epopeus, the king of Sikyon, who was killed by
Lykos. Antiope was led away by him in fetters. She gave birth
to twin sons in the Kithairon, where she left them. A shepherd
raised the boys and called them Amphion and Zethos. Later on,
Antiope succeeded in escaping from the torments of Lykos and
his wife, Dirke. She accidentally sought shelter in the Kithairon,
with the twin brothers, now grown up. The shepherd reveals
to the youths the fact that Antiope is their mother. Thereupon
they cruelly kill Dirke, and deprive Lykos of the rulership.

The remaining twin sagas, 45 which are extremely numerous,
cannot be discussed in detail in this connection. Possibly they
represent a complication of the birth myth by another very
ancient and widely distributed myth complex, that of the hostile
brothers, the detailed discussion of which belongs elsewhere.
The apparently late and secondary character of the twin type in
the birth myths justifies the separation of this part of mythology
from the present theme. As regards the Romulus saga,
Mommsen 46 renders it highly probable that it originally told only
of Romulus, while the figure of Remus was added subsequently,
and somewhat disjointedly, when it became desirable to invest the
consulate with a solemnity founded on the old tradition.

Hercules 47

After the loss of his numerous sons, Elektryon betroths his
daughter, Alkmene, to Amphitryon, the son of his brother, Alkaos.

45 Some Greek twin sagas are quoted by Schubert (loc. cit., p. 13, et
seq.) in their essential content. Concerning the extensive distribution of
this legendary form, compare the somewhat confused book of J. H.
Becker, " The Twin Saga as the Key to the Interpretation of Ancient
Tradition. With a Table of the Twin Saga." Leipsic, 1891. German text.

40 Mommsen, "Die Remus Legende," Hermes, 1881.

"After Preller, Greek Mythology (Leipzig, 1854, II, pp. 120 et seq.).

MYTH OF THE BIRTH OF THE HERO 45

However, Amphitryon, through an unfortunate accident, causes
the death of Elektryon, and escapes to Thebes with his affianced
bride. He has not enjoyed her love, for she has solemnly pledged
him not to touch her until he has avenged her brothers on the
Thebans. An expedition is therefore started by him, from
Thebes, and he conquers the king of the hostile people, Pterelaos,
with all the islands. As he is returning to Thebes, Zeus in the
form of Amphitryon 48 betakes himself to Alkmene, to whom he
presents a golden goblet as evidence of victory. He rests with
the beauteous maiden during three nights, according to the later
poets, holding back the sun one day. In the same night, Amphi-
tryon arrives, exultant in his victory and aflame with love. In the
fulness of time, the fruit of the divine and the human embrace 49 is
brought forth and Zeus announces to the gods his son, as the most
powerful ruler of the future. But his jealous spouse, Hera,
knows how to obtain from him the pernicious oath, that the first-
born grandson of Perseus is to be the ruler of all the other de-
scendants of Perseus. Hera hurries to Mykene, to deliver the
wife of the third Perside, Sthenelos, of the seven months child,
Eurystheus. At the same time she hinders and endangers the
confinement of Alkmene, through al sorts of wicked sorcery, pre-
cisely as at the birth of the god of light, Apollo. Alkmene finally
gives birth to Herakles and Iphikles, the latter in no way the

48 The same transformation of the divine procreator into the form of
the human father is found in the birth history of the Egyptian queen,
Hatshepset (about 1500 before Christ), who believes that the god Amen
cohabited with her mother, Aahames, in the form of her father, Thothmes
the First (see Budge: A History of Egypt, V; Books on Egypt and
Chaldea, Vol. XII, p. 21, etc.). Later on she married her brother, Thothmes
II, presumably the Pharaoh of Exodus, after whose dishonorable death
she endeavored to eradicate his memory, and herself assumed the ruler-
ship, in masculine fashion (cp. the Deuteronium, edited by Schrader, II
ed., 1902).

49 A similar mingling of the divine and human posterity is related in the
myth of Theseus, whose mother Aithra, the beloved of Poseidon, was
visited in one night by this god, and by the childless King Aigeus of
Athens, who had been brought under the influence of wine. The boy was
raised in secret, and in ignorance of his father (v. Roscher's dictionary,
article Aigeus).

4

46 OTTO RANK

former's equal in courage or in strength, but destined to become
the father of his faithful friend, Iolaos. 50 In this way Eurystheus
became the king in Mykene, in the land of the Argivians, in con-
formity with the oath of Zeus, and the after born Herakles was
his subject.

The old legend related the raising of Herakles on the strength
giving waters of the Dirke, the nourishment of all Theban chil-
dren. Later on, however, another version arose. Fearing the
jealousy of Hera, Alkmene exposed the child which she had borne
in a place which for a long time after was known as the field of
Herakles. About this time, Athene arrived, in company with
Hera. She marvelled at the beautiful form of the child, and per-
suaded Hera to put him to her breast. But the boy took the
breast with far greater strength than his age seemed to warrant;
Hera felt pains and angrily flung the child to the ground. Athene,
however, carried him to the neighboring city and took him to
Queen Alkmene, whose maternity was unknown to her, as a
poor foundling, whom she begged her to raise for the sake of
charity. This peculiar accident is truly remarkable ! The child's
own mother allows him to perish, disregarding the duty of mater-
nal love, and the stepmother who is filled with natural hatred
against the child, saves her enemy without knowing it (after
Diodor, IV, 9; German translation by Wurm, Stuttgart, 1831).
Herakles had drawn only a few drops from Hera's breast, but
the divine milk was sufficient to endow him with immortality.
An attempt on Hera's part to kill the boy, asleep in his cradle,
by means of two serpents, proved a failure, for the child awak-

00 Alkmene bore Herakles as the son of Zeus, and Iphikles as the off-
spring of Amphitryon. According to Apollodorus, 2, 4, 8, they were twin
children, born at the same time; according to others Iphikles was con-
ceived and born one night later than Herakles (see Roscher's Lexicon,
Amphitryon and Alkmene). The shadowy character of the twin brother,
and his loose connection with the entire myth, is again evident. In a
similar way, Telephos, the son of Auge, was exposed together with Par-
thenopaus, the son of Atalantis, nursed by a doe, and taken by herders to
King Korythos. The external subsequent insertion of the partner is here
again quite obvious.

MYTH OF THE BIRTH OF THE HERO 47

ened and crushed the beasts with a single pressure of his hands.
As a boy, Herakles one day killed his tutor, Linos, being in-
censed about an unjust chastisement. Amphitryon, fearing the
wildness of the youth, sends him to tend his ox-herds in the
mountains, with the herders, among whom he is said by some to
have been raised entirely, like Amphion and Zethos, Kyros and
Romulus. Here he lives from the hunt, in the freedom of nature
(Preller, II, 123).

The myth of Herakles suggests in certain features the Indian
saga of the hero Krishna, who like many heroes escapes a general
infanticide, and is then brought up by a herder's wife, Iasodha.
A wicked she-demon appears, who has been sent by King Kansa
to kill the boy. She takes the post of wet nurse in the home, but
is recognized by Krishna, who bites her so severely in suckling
(like Hera, when nursing Herakles, whom she also means to
destroy), that she dies. (The early history of the pastoral god
Krishna is related in the so-called Kariwamsa.)

Jesus

The Gospel according to Luke (1, 26 to 35) relates the proph-
ecy of the birth of Jesus, as follows :

"And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from
God unto a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin espoused
to a man whose name zvas Joseph, of the house of David ; and the
virgin's name was Mary. And the angel came in unto her, and
said, Hail! thou that art highly favored, the Lord is with thee:
blessed art thou among women ! And when she saw him, she was
troubled at his saying, and cast in her mind what manner of salu-
tation this should be. And the angel said unto her, Fear not,
Mary ; for thou hast found favor with God. And, behold, thou
shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son and call hii
name Jesus. He shall be great and shall be called the Son of the
Highest: and the Lord God shalt give unto him the throne of his
father David. And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for

48 OTTO RANK

ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end. Then said Mary
unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?
And the angel answered and said unto her, the Holy Ghost shall
come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow
thee; therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee
shall be called the Son of God."

This report is supplemented by the Gospel according to Mat-
thew 50 * 1 (i, 18 to 25), in the narrative of the birth and childhood of
Jesus : " Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise : when as
his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together,
she was found with child of the Holy Ghost. Then Joseph, her
husband, being a just man, and not willing to make her a public
example, was minded to put her away privily. But, while he
thought on these things, behold the angel of the Lord appeared to
him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to
take unto thee Mary thy wife ; for that which is conceived in her
is of the Holy Ghost. And she shall bring forth a son, and thou
shall call his name Jesus ; for he shall save his people from their
sins. (Now all this was done that it might be fulfilled which was
spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Behold a virgin shall
be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his
name Emmanuel, which, being interpreted, is God with us.)
Then Joseph, being raised from sleep, did as the angel of the Lord
had bidden him, and took unto him his wife. And knew her

Wft For the formal demonstration of the entire identity of the birth
and early history of Jesus with the other hero-myths, the author has pre-
sumed to re-arrange the corresponding paragraphs from the different
versions, in the Gospels, irrespective of the traditional sequence and the
originality of the individual parts. The age, origin and genuineness of
these parts are briefly summarized and discussed in W. Soltan's Birth
History of Jesus Christ (German text), Leipsic, 1902. The transmitted
versions of the several Gospels, — which according to Usener (Birth and
Childhood of Christ, 1903, in Lectures and Essays (German text), Leipsic,
1907), contradict and even exclude each other, — have been placed, or left,
in juxtaposition, precisely for the reason that the apparently contradictory
elements in these birth myths are to be elucidated in the present research,
no matter if these contradictions be encountered within a single uniform
saga, or in its different versions (as, for example, in the Kyros myth).

MYTH OF THE BIRTH OF THE HERO 49

not, till she had brought forth her first born son; and he called his
name Jesus."

Here we interpolate the detailed account of the birth of Jesus,
from the Gospel of Luke (2, 4 to 20) : " And Joseph also went up
from Galilee, out of Nazareth, into Judea, unto the city of David,
which is called Bethlehem (because he was of the house and
lineage of David), to be taxed with Mary his espoused wife,
being great with child. And so it was that while they were there,
the days were accomplished that she should be delivered. And she
brought forth her first bom son, and wrapped him in swaddling
clothes, and laid him in a manger; 51 because there was no room
for them in the inn. And there were in the same country shep-
herds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flocks by night.
And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of
the Lord shone round about them, and they were sore afraid.
And the angel said unto them, Fear not; for behold I bring you
good tidings of great joy which shall be to all people. For unto you
is born this day, in the city of David, a Saviour, which is Christ
the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you, ye shall find the
babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And sud-
denly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host
praising God and saying, Glory to God in the Highest, and on
earth peace, good will toward men. And it came to pass as the
angels were gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds said
one to another, let us now go even unto Bethlehem and see this
thing which has come to pass, which the Lord has made known
unto us. And they came with haste, and found Mary and Joseph,
and the babe lying in a manger. And when they had seen it they
made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning
this child. And all they that heard wondered at those things
which were told them by the shepherds. But Mary kept all these

61 Concerning the birth of Jesus in a cave, and the furnishing of the
birth place with the typical animals (ox and ass) compare Jeremias, Baby-
lonisches im Neuen Testament (Leipzig, 1905), p. 56, and Preuschen, Jesu
Geburt in einer Hohle, Zeitschrift fur die Neutest. Wissenschaften, 1902,
P- 359.

SO OTTO RANK

things and pondered them in her heart. And the shepherds re-
turned glorifying and praising God for all the things which they
had heard and seen, as it was told unto them."

We now continue the account after Matthew, in the second
chapter : " Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in
the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from
the East to Jerusalem, saying, Where is he that was born King
of the Jews, for we have seen his star in the east, and have come to
worship him. When Herod the king had heard these things
he was troubled and all Jerusalem with him. And when he had
gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people together,
he demanded of them where Christ should be born. And they
said unto him, in Bethlehem of Judea : for thus it is written by
the prophet, And thou Bethlehem in the land of Juda, art not the
least among the princes of Juda, for out of thee shall come a
governor which shall rule my people Israel.

Then Herod, when he had privily called the wise men, enquired
of them diligently what time the star appeared. And he sent
them to Bethlehem, and said, Go and search diligently for the
young child ; and when ye have found him, bring me word again,
that I may come and worship him also. When they had heard the
king they departed; and lo the star, which they saw in the east,
went before them till it came and stood over where the young
child was.

When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great
joy. And when they were come into the house, they saw the
young child with Mary his mother, and fell down and worshipped
him: and when they had opened their treasures, they presented
unto him gifts ; gold, and frankincense, and myrrh. And being
warned of God in a dream, that they should not return to Herod,
they departed into their own country another way. And when
they were departed, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared to
Joseph in a dream, saying, Arise, and take the young child and!
his mother and flee into Egypt, and be thou there until I bring

MYTH OF THE BIRTH OF THE HERO 5 I

thee word : for Herod will seek the young child to destroy him.
When he arose, he took the young child and his mother by night,
and departed into Egypt; and was there until the death of Herod;
that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the
prophet, saying, Out of Egypt have I called my son. Then
Herod, when he saw that he was mocked of the wise men, was
exceeding wroth, and sent forth, and slew all the children that
were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof, from two years
old and under, according to the time which he had diligently en-
quired of the wise men. But when Herod was dead, behold, an
angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying
arise and take the young child and his mother, and go into the land
of Israel : for they are dead which sought the young childs life.
And he arose and took the young child and his mother, and came
into the land of Israel. But when he heard Archelaus did reign
in Judea in the room of his father Herod, he was afraid to go
thither: notwithstanding being warned of God in a dream, he
turned aside into the parts of Galilee. And he came and dwelt in
a city called Nazareth ; that it might be fulfilled which was spoken
by the prophets, He shall be called a Nazarene." 52

Similar birth legends to those of Jesus have also been trans-
mitted of other " founders of religions " ; such as Zoroaster, who
is said to have lived about the year iooo before Christ. His
mother Dughda dreams, in the sixth month of her pregnancy, that
the wicked and the good spirits are fighting for the embryonic
Zoroaster ; a monster tears the future Zoroaster from the mother's
womb, but a light god fights the monster with his horn of light,
re-encloses the embryo in the mother's womb, blows upon Dughda,

62 According to recent investigations, the birth history of Christ is said
to have the greatest resemblance with the royal Egyptian myth, over five
thousand years old, which relates the birth of Amenophis III. Here
again recurs the divine prophecy of the birth of a son, to the waiting
queen; her fertilization by the breath of heavenly fire; the divine cows,
which nurse the new born child; the homage of the kings, and so forth.
In this connection, compare A. Malvert, Wissenschaft und Religion, Frank-
fort, 1904, pp. 49 et seq, also the suggestion of Professor Idleib in Bonn
(Feuilleton of Frankfurter Zeitung, November 8, 1908).

52 OTTO RANK

and she became pregnant. On awakening, she hurries in her
fear to a wise dream interpreter, who is unable to explain the won-
derful dream before the end of three days : The child, which she
is carrying, is destined to become a man of great importance;
the dark cloud and the mountain of light signify, that she and her
son will at first have to undergo numerous trials, through ty-
rants and other enemies, but at last they will overcome all perils.
Dughda at once returns to her home, and informs Pourushacpa,
her husband, of everything that has happened. Immediately
after his birth, the boy was seen to laugh : this was the first miracle
through which he drew attention to himself. The magicians an-
nounce the birth of the child as a portent of disaster to the prince
of the realm, Duransarun, who betakes himself without delay to
the dwelling of Pourushacpa, in order to stab the child. But his
hand falls paralyzed, and he must leave with his errand undone,
This was the second miracle. Soon after, the wicked demons
steal the child from his mother and carry him into the desert, in
order to kill him; but Dughda finds the unharmed child, calmly
sleeping. This is the third miracle. Later on, Zoroaster was to
be trampled upon, in a narrow passage way, by a herd of oxen,
by command of the king. 53 But the largest of the cattle took the
child between his feet, and preserved it from harm. This was the
fourth miracle. The fifth is merely a repetition of the preceding.
What the cattle had refused to do, was to be accomplished by
horses. But again the child was protected by a horse from the
hoofs of the other horses. Duransurun thereupon had the cubs
in a wolf's den killed during the absence of the old wolves, and

03 Very similar traits are found in the Keltic saga of Habis, as trans-
mitted by Justin (44,4). Born as the illegitimate son of a king's daughter,
Habis is persecuted in all sorts of ways by his royal grandfather, Gargoris,
but is always saved by divine providence, until he is finally recognized by
his grandfather, and assumes royal sway. As in the Zarathustra legend,
there occurs an entire series of the most varied methods of persecution.
He is at first exposed, but nursed by wild animals; then he was to be
trampled upon by a herd in a narrow path; then he was cast before hungry
beasts, but they again nursed him,. and finally he is thrown into the sea,
but is gently lapped ashore and nursed by a doe, near which he grows up.

MYTH OF THE BIRTH OF THE HERO S3

Zoroaster was laid down in their place. But a god closed the
jaws of the furious wolves, so that they could not harm the child.
Two divine cows arrived instead and presented their udders to
the child, giving it to drink. This was the sixth miracle, through
which Zoroaster's life was preserved. (Compare Spiegel's Eran-
ische Altertumskunde, I, pp. 688 et seq., also Brodbeck, Zoroaster,
Leipzig, 1893.)

Related traits are also encountered in the history of Buddha,
whose life is referred to the sixth century before Christ; such as
the long sterility of the parents, the dream, the birth of the boy
under the open sky, the death of the mother and her substitu-
tion by a foster-mother, the announcing of the birth to the ruler
of the realm; later on the losing of the boy in the temple (as in
the history of Jesus; compare Luke 2, 40-52).

Siegfried
The old Norse Thidreksaga } as registered about the year 1250
by an Icelander, according to oral traditions and ancient songs,
relates the history of the birth and youth of Siegfried, as fol-
lows: 54 King Sigmund of Tarlungaland, on his return from an
expedition, banishes his wife Sisibe, the daughter of King Nidung
of Hispania, who is accused by Count Hartvin, whose advances
she has spurned, of having had illicit relations with a menials
The king's counsellors advise him to mutilate instead of kill the
innocent queen, and Hartvin is ordered to cut out her tongue in the
forest, so as to bring it to the king as a pledge. His companion,
Count Hermann, opposes the execution of the cruel command,
and proposes to present the tongue of a dog to the king. While
the two men are engaged in a violent quarrel, Sisibe gives birth to
a remarkably beautiful boy; she then took a glass vessel, and after
having wrapped the boy in linens, she placed him in the glass 1

M Compare August Rassmann : Die deutsche Heldensage und ihre Hei-
mat, Hanover, 1857-8, Vol. II, pp. 7 et seq; for the sources, see Jiriczek,
Die deutsche Heldensage (collection Goschen) and Piper's introduction to
the volume: Die Nibelungen, in Kurschner's German National Literature.

54 OTTO RANK

vessel, which she carefully closed again and placed beside her
(Rassmann). Count Hartvin was conquered in the fight, and
in falling kicked the glass vessel, so that it fell into the river.
When the queen saw this she swooned, and died soon afterwards.
Hermann went home, told the king everything, and was banished
from the country. The glass vessel meantime drifted down
stream to the sea, and it was not long before the tide turned.
Then the vessel floated on to a rocky cliff, and the water ran off
so that the place where the vessel was was perfectly dry. The
boy inside had grown somewhat, and when the vessel struck the
rock, it broke, and the child began to cry. [Rassmann] The boy's
wailing was heard by a doe, which seized him with her lips, and
carried him to her litter, where she nursed him together with her
young. After the child had lived twelve months in the den of
the doe, he had grown to the height and strength of other boys
four years of age. One day he ran into the forest, where dwelt
the wise and siklfull smith, Mimir who had lived for nine years
in childless wedlock. He saw the boy, who was followed by the
faithful doe, took him to his home, and resolved to bring him up
as his own son. He gave him the name of Siegfried. In Mimir's
home, Siegfried soon attained an enormous stature and strength,
but his wilfulness caused Mimir to get rid of him. He sent the
youth into the forest, where it had been arranged that the dragon
Regin, Mimir's brother, was to kill him. But Siegfried conquers
the dragon, and kills Mimir. He then proceeds to Brynhild, who
names his parents to him.

Similarly to the early history of Siegfried, an Austrasiatic saga
tells of the birth and youth of Wolfdietrich. 55 His mother is
likewise accused of unfaithfulness, and intercourse with the devil,
by a vassal whom she has repulsed, and who speaks evil of her
to the returning king, Hugdietrich of Constantinople. 60

"Compare: Deutsches Heldenbuch, Part III, Vol. I (Berlin, 1871),
edited by Amelung and Jaenicke, which also contains the second version
(B) of the Wolfdietrich saga.

"The motive of calumniation of the wife by a rejected suitor, in com-
bination with the exposure and nursing by an animal (doe), forms the

MYTH OF THE BIRTH OF THE HERO 55

The king surrenders the child to the faithful Berchtung, who is
to kill it, but exposes it instead, in the forest, near the water, in
the hope that it will fall in of its own accord and thus find its
death. But the frolicking child remains unhurt, and even the
wild animals, lions, bears, wolves, which come at night to the
water, do not harm it. The astonished Berchtung resolves to save
the boy, and he surrenders him to a game keeper who, together
with his wife, raises him and names him Wolfdietrich. 57

The following later hero epics may still be quoted in this con-
nection. In the thirteenth century, the saga of Horn, the son of
Aluf, who after having been exposed on the sea, finally reaches
the court of King Hunlaf, and after numerous adventures wins
the king's daughter, Rimhilt, for his wife. . Furthermore, a detail
suggestive of Siegfried, from the saga of the skilfull smith W is-
land, who, after avenging his foully murdered father, floats down
the river Weser, artfully enclosed in the trunk of a tree, and
loaded with the tools and treasures of his teachers. Finally the
Arthur legend contains the commingling of divine and human
paternity, the exposure and the early life with a lowly man.

Lohengrin

The widely distributed group of sagas which have been woven
around the mythic knight with the swan (the old French Cheva-
lier au eigne) can be traced back to very ancient Keltic traditions.
The following is the version which has been made familiar by

nucleus of the story of Genovefa and her son Schmerzenreich, as told, for
example, by the Grimm brothers, in their German Sagas, II, Berlin, 1818,
pp. 280 et seq. Here, again, the faithless calumniator proposes to drown
the countess with her child in the water. For literary and historical
orientation, compare L. Zacher, Die Historie von der Pfalzgrafin Geno-
vefa, Koenigsberg, i860, and B. Seuffert, Die Legende von der Pfalz-
grafin Genovefa, Wiirzburg, 1877. Similar sagas of wives suspected of
infidelity and punished by exposure are discussed in the XI chapter of my
investigation of "Das Inzestmotiv in Dichtung und Sage" (The Incest
Motive in Fiction and Legends).

57 The same accentuation of the animal motive is found in the saga
of Schalu, the Hindoo wolf child; compare Julg, Mongolische Marchen
(Mongolian fairy tales; Innsbruck, 1868).

56 OTTO RANK

Wagner's dramatisation of this theme. The story of Lohengrin,
the knight with the swan, as transmitted by the medieval German
epic [modernized by Junghaus, Reclam] and briefly rendered by
the Grimm brothers, in their "German Sagas " (Part II, Berlin,
1818, p. 306) under the title: Lohengrin in Brabant.

The Duke of Brabant and Limburg died, without leaving
other heirs than a young daughter, Els, or Elsam by name ; her he
recommended on his death bed to one of his retainers, Friedrich
von Telramund. Friedrich, the intrepid warrior, became em-
boldened to demand the youthful duchess' hand and lands, under
the false claim that she had promised to marry him. She stead-
fastly refused to do so. Friedrich complained to Emperor Hein-
rich, surnamed the Vogler, and the verdict was that she must de-
fend herself against him, through some hero, in a so called divine
judgment, in which God would accord the victory to the innocent,
and defeat the guilty. As none were ready to take her part, the
young duchess prayed ardently to God, to save her ; and far away
in distant Montsalvatsch, in the Council of the Grail, the sound
of the bell was heard, showing that there was some one in urgent
need of help. The Grail therefore resolved to despatch as a
rescuer, Lohengrin the son of Parsifal. Just as he was about
to place his foot in the stirrup a swan came floating down the
water drawing a skiff behind him. As soon as Lohengrin set eyes
upon the swan, he exclaimed : " Take the steed back to the manger,
I shall follow this bird wherever he may lead me." Having faith
in God's omnipotence he took no food with him in the skiff.
After they had been afloat on the sea five days, the swan dipped
his bill in the water, caught a fish, ate one half of it, and gave the
other half to the prince to eat. Thus the knight was fed by the
swan.

Meanwhile Elsa had summoned her chieftains and retainers
to a meeting in Antwerp. Precisely on the day of the assembly,
a swan was sighted swimming up stream (river Schelde) and
drawing behind him a skiff, in which Lohengrin lay asleep on his

MYTH OF THE BIRTH OF THE HERO 57

shield. The swan promptly came to land at the shore, and the
prince was joyfully welcomed. Hardly had his helmet, shield
and sword been taken from the skiff, when the swan at once swam
away again. Lohengrin heard of the wrong which had been done
to the duchess, and willingly consented to become her champion.
Elsa then summoned all her relatives and subjects. The place was
prepared in Mayence, where Lohengrin and Friedrich were to
fight in the emperor's presence. The hero of the Grail defeated
Friedrich, who confessed having lied to the duchess, and was
executed with the axe. Elsa was alloted to Lohengrin, they
having long been lovers ; but he secretly insisted upon her avoid-
ing all questions as to his ancestry, or whence he had come, saying
that otherwise he would have to leave her instantaneously and
she would never see him again.

For some time, the couple lived in peace and happiness. Loh-
engrin was a wise and mighty ruler over his land, and also served
his emperor well in his expeditions against the Huns and the
heathen. But it came to pass that one day in throwing the javelin
he unhorsed the Duke of Cleve, so that the latter broke an, arm.
The Duchess of Cleve was angry, and spoke out amongst the
women, saying: Lohengrin may be brave enough, and he seems
to be a good Christian ; what a pity that his nobility is not of
much account for no one knows whence he has come floating to
this land." These words pierced the heart of the Duchess of
Brabant, and she changed color with emotion. At night, when
her spouse was holding her in his arms, she wept, and he said
"What is the matter, Elsa, my own?" She made answer, "the
Duchess of Cleve has caused me sore pain." Lohengrin was
silent and asked no more. The second night, the same came to
pass. But in the third night, Elsa could no longer retain herself,
and she spoke : " Lord, do not chide me ! / wish to know, for our
children's sake, zvhence you were born; for my heart tells me that
you are of high rank." When the day broke, Lohengrin declared
in public whence he had come, that Parsifal was his father, and

5 8 OTTO RANK

God had sent him from the Grail. He then asked for his two
children, which the duchess had borne him, kissed them, told
them to take good care of his horn and sword which he would
leave behind, and said : " Now, I must be gone." To the duchess
he left a little ring which his mother had given him. Then the
swan, his friend, came swimming swiftly, with the skiff behind
him; the prince stepped in and crossed the water, back to the
service of the Grail. Elsa sank down in a faint. The empress
resolved to keep the younger boy Lohengrin, for his father's sake,
and to bring him up as her own child. But the widow wept and
mourned 58 the rest of her life for her beloved spouse, who never
came back to her.

On inverting the Lohengrin saga in such a way that the end is
placed first, — on the basis of the re-arrangement, or even trans-
mutation of motives, not uncommonly found in myths, — we find
the type of saga with which we have now become familiar: The
infant Lohengrin, who is identical with his father of the same
name, floats in a vessel upon the sea and is carried ashore by a
swan. The empress adopts him as her son, and he becomes a
valorous hero. Having married a noble maiden of the land, he
forbids her to enquire as to his origin. When the command is
broken he is obliged to reveal his miraculous descent and divine
mission, after which the swan carries him back in his skiff to the
Grail.

Other versions of the saga of the Knight with the Swan have

retained this original arrangement of the motives, although they

appear commingled with elements of fairy tales. The saga of the

Knight with the Swan, as related in the Flemish People's Book

88 The Grimm Brothers, in their German Sagas (part II, p. 206, etc.),
quote six further versions of the saga of the Knight with the Swan. Cer-
tain fairy tales of the Grimm Brothers, such as "The Six Swans" (No.
49), 'The Twelve Brothers" (No. 9), and the "Seven Ravens" (No. 25),
with their parallels and variations, mentioned in the 3d volume of the
" Kinder- und Hausmarchen " also belong to the same mythological cycle.
Further material from this cycle may be found in Leo's " Beowulf," and
in Gorre's "Introduction to Lohengrin" (Heidelberg, 1813).

MYTH OF THE BIRTH OF THE HERO 59

(Deutsche Sagen, I, 29), contains in the beginning the history
of the birth of seven children, 69 borne by Beatrix, the wife of
King Oriant of Flanders. The wicked mother of the absent
king, Matabruna, orders that the children be killed, and the queen
be given seven puppy dogs in their stead. But the servant con-
tents himself with the exposure of the children, who are found by
a hermit, named Helias, and are nourished by a goat until they
are grown. Beatrix is thrown into a dungeon. Later on Mata-
bruna learns that the children have been saved and her repeated
command to kill them causes the hunter, who has been charged
with the murder, to bring her as a sign of apparent obedience to
her behest, the silver neck chains which the children wore already
at the time of their birth. One of the boys, named Helias, after
his foster father, alone keeps his chain, and is thereby saved from
the fate of his brothers, who are transformed into swans, as soon
as their chains are removed. Matabruna volunteers to prove the
relations of the queen with the dog, and upon her instigation,
Beatrix is to be killed, unless a champion arises to defend her.
In her need, she prays to God, who sends her son Helias as a
rescuer. The brothers are also saved by means of the other
chains, except one, whose chain has already been melted down.
King Oriant now transfers the rulership to his son Helias, who
causes the wicked Matabruna to be burned. One day, Helias sees
his brother, the swan, drawing a skiff on the lake surrounding the
castle. This he regards as a heavenly sign, he arms himself and
mounts the skiff. The swan takes him through rivers and lakes
to the place where God has ordained him to go. Next follows

69 The ancient Longobard tale of the exposure of King Lamissio, re-
lated by Paulus Diaconus (L, 15), gives a similar incident. A public
woman had thrown her seven new-born infants into a fish pond. King
Agelmund passed by, and looked curiously at the children, turning them
around with his spear. But when one of the children took hold of the
spear, the king considered this as of good augury; he ordered this boy'
to be taken out of the pond, and to be given to a wet nurse. As he had
taken him from the pond, which in his language is called ** lama," he
named the boy Lamissio. He grew up into a stalwart champion, and after
Agelmund's death, became king of the Longobards.

60 OTTO RANK

the liberation of an innocently accused duchess, in analogy with
the Lohengrin saga; and his marriage to her daughter Clarissa,
who is forbidden to ask for her husband's ancestry. In the sev-
enth year of their marriage she disobeys and puts the question,
after which Helias returns home in the swan's skiff. Finally, his
lost brother swan is likewise released.

The characteristic features of the Lohengrin saga, — that the
divine hero disappears again in the same mysterious fashion in
which he has arrived; also the transference of mythical motives
from the life of the older hero, bearing the same name, to a
younger one, a very universal process in myth-formation, are
likewise embodied in the Anglian-Longobard saga of Sceaf, which
is mentioned in the introduction to the Beowulf-Song, the oldest
German epic, preserved in the Anglo-Saxon tongue (translated by
H. v. Wolzogen, Reclam). The father of old Beowulf received
his name, Scild Scefing (meaning the son of Sceaf), because as
a very young boy, he was cast ashore as a stranger, asleep in a
boat on a sheaf of grain (Anglo-saxon, sceaf). The waves of
the sea carried him to the coast of the country which he was des-
tined to defend. The inhabitants welcomed him as a miracle,
raised him, and later on made him their king, as an emissary of
God. (Compare Grimm, German Mythology, I, p. 306; III, p.
391, and H. Leo: Beowulf, Halle, 1839.) What is told of the
ancestor of the royal house, Scaf, 60 or Sceaf, appears in the Beo-
wulf song transferred to his son, Sceafing Scild, according to the
unanimous statement of Grimm (see above), and Leo (p. 24) :
His dead body is exposed at his behest, surrounded by kingly
splendor, upon a ship without a crew, which is sent out into the

"Scaf is the high German "Schaffing" (barrel), which leads Leo to
assume, in connection with Scild's being called Scefing, that he had no
father Sceaf or Schaf at all, but was himself the boy cast ashore by the
waves, who was named the "son of the barrel" (Schaffing). The name
Beowulf itself, explained by Grimm as Bienen-wolf (bee-wolf), seems to
mean originally (according to Wolzogen) Barwelf, namely Jungbar (bear
cub or whelp), which is suggestive of the saga of the origin of the Guelphs
(Ursprung der Welfen, Grimm, II, 233), where the boys are to be thrown
into the water as " whelps."

MYTH OF THE BIRTH OF THE HERO 6 1

sea. Thus he vanishes in the same mysterious manner in which his
father arrived ashore; this trait being accounted for, in analogy
with the Lohengrin saga, by the mythical identity of father and son.

A curso ry review of these variegated hero myths forcibly brings
out a series of uniformly common features, with a typical ground
work, from which a standard saga, as it were, may be constructed.
This schedule corresponds approximately to the ideal human
skeleton which is constantly seen, with minor deviations, on trans-
illumination of figures which outwardly differ from one another.
The indivi dual traits of the several myths, and especially appar-
ently crude variations from the prototype, can only be entirely
elucidated by the myth-interpretation. The standard saga itself
may be formulated according to the following scheme :

The hero is the child of most distinguished parents; usually'
the son_o£_a_king. His origin is greceded by difficulties, such as!
continence, or prolonged barrenness, or secret intercourse of the
parents, due to external prohibition or obstacles. During the
pregnancy, or antedating the same, there is a jDrophecy, in form
of a dream or oracle, cautioning against his birth, and usually
threatening danger to the father, or his representative. As a rule,
he is surrendered to the water, in a box. He is then saved by
animals, or by lowly people (shepherds) and is suckled by a
female animal, or by a humble woman. After he has grown up,
he finds his distinguished parents, in a highly versatile fashion ;
takes his revenge on his father, on the one hand, is acknowledged
on the other, and finally achieves rank and honors. 59

The normal relations of the hero towards his father and his

mother regularly appearing impaired in all these myths, as shown

by the schedule, there is reason to assume that something in the

nature of the hero must account for such a disturbance, and

motives of this kind are not very difficult to discover. It is

readily understood — and may be noted in the modern epigones of

59 The possibility of further specification of separate items of this
schedule will be seen from the compilation as given by H. Lessmann, at
the conclusion of his work on " The Kyros Saga in Europe."

62 OTTO RANK

the heroic age — that for the hero who is exposed to envy, jealousy
and calumny to a much higher degree than all others, the descent
from his parents often becomes the source of the greatest distress
and embarrassment. The old saying that " A prophet is not with-
out honor save in his own country and in his father's house," has
no other meaning but this, that he whose parents, brothers and
sisters, or playmates, are known to us, is not so readily conceded
to be a prophet (Gospel of St. Mark, VI, 4). There seems to be
a certain necessity for the prophet to deny his parents ; also, the
well-known opera of Meyerbeer is based upon the avowal that the
prophetic hero is allowed, in favor of his mission, to abandon
and repudiate even his tenderly beloved mother.

A number of difficulties arise, however, as we proceed to a
deeper enquiry into the motives which oblige the hero to sever
his family relations. Numerous investigators have emphasized
that the understanding of myth formation requires our going
back to their ultimate source, namely the individual faculty of
imagination. 60 The fact has also been pointed out that this
imaginative faculty is found in its active and unchecked exuber-
ance only in childhood. Therefore, the imaginative life of the
child should first be studied, in order to facilitate the under-
standing of the far more complex and also more handicapped
mythical and artistic imagination in general.

Meanwhile the investigation of the juvenile faculty of im-
agination has hardly commenced, instead of being sufficiently
advanced to permit the utilization of the findings for the ex-
planation of the more complicated psychic activities. The
reason for this imperfect understanding of the psychic life of
the child is referable to the lack of a suitable instrument, as well
as of a reliable avenue, leading into the intricacies of this very
delicate and rather inaccessible domain. These juvenile emo-
tions can by no means be studied in the normal human adult, and
it may actually be charged, in view of certain psychic dis-

60 See also Wundt, who psychologically interprets the hero as a pro-
jection of human desires and aspirations (loc. cit., p. 48).

MYTH OF THE BIRTH OF THE HERO 63

turbances, that the normal psychic integrity of normal subjects
consists precisely in their having overcome and forgotten their
childish vagaries and imaginations: so that the way has become
blocked. In children, on the other hand, empirical observation
(which as a rule must remain merely superficial) fails in the
investigation of psychic processes, because we are not as yet
enabled to trace all manifestations correctly to their motive
forces : so that we are lacking the instrument. There is a certain
class of persons, the so-called psychoneurotics, shown by the
teachings of Freud to have remained children, in a sense, although
otherwise appearing grown up. These psychoneurotics may be
said not to have given up their juvenile psychic life, which on
the contrary, in the course of maturity, has become strengthened
and fixed, instead of modified. In psychoneurotics, the emotions
of the child are preserved and exaggerated, thus becoming
capable of pathological effects, in which these humble emotions
appear broadened and enormously magnified. The fancies of
neurotics are, as it were, the uniformly exaggerated reproductions
of the childish imaginings. This would point the way to a
solution of the problem. Unfortunately, however, the access is
still much more difficult to establish in these cases than to the
child mind. There is only one known instrument which makes
this road practicable, namely the psychoanalytic method, which
has been developed through the work of Freud. Constant
handling of this instrument will clear the observer's vision to such
a degree that he will be enabled to discover the identical motive
forces, only in delicately shaded manifestations, also in the psychic
life of those who do not become neurotics later on.

Professor Freud had the amiability to place at the author's
disposal his highly appreciated experience with the psychology of
the neuroses ; and on this material are based the following com-
ments, on the imaginative faculty of the child as well as the
neurotic.

The detachment of the growing individual from the authority

64 OTTO RANK

f/of the parents is one of the most necessary, but also one of
the most painful achievements of evolution. It is absolutely
necessary for this detachment to take place, and it may be as-
sumed that all normal grown individuals have accomplished it
to a certain extent. Social progress is essentially based upon
this opposition between the two generations. On the other hand,
there exists a class of neurotics whose condition indicates that
they have failed to solve this very problem. For the young child,
the parents are in the first place the sole authority, and the
source of all faith. To resemble them, i. e. y the progenitor of the
same sex ; to grow up like father or mother, this is the most
intense and portentous wish of the child's early years. Pro-
gressive intellectual development naturally brings it about that
the child gradually becomes acquainted with the category to
which the parents belong. Other parents become known to the
child, who compares these with his own, and thereby becomes
justified in doubting the incomparability and uniqueness with
which he had invested them. Trifling occurrences in the life of
the child, which induce a mood of dissatisfaction, lead up to a
criticism of the parents, and the gathering conviction that other
parents are preferable in certain ways, is utilized for this attitude
of the child towards the parents. From the psychology of the
neuroses, we have learned that very intense emotions of sexual
rivalry are also involved in this connection. The causative factor
evidently is the feeling of being neglected. Opportunities arise
only too frequently when the child is neglected, or at least feels
himself neglected, when he misses the entire love of the parents,
or at least regrets having to share the same with the other
children of the family. The feeling that one's own inclinations
are not entirely reciprocated seeks its relief in the idea, — often
consciously remembered from very early years, — of being a step-
child, or an adopted child. Many persons who have not become
neurotics, very frequently remember occasions of this kind, when
the hostile behavior of the parents was interpreted and recipro-

MYTH OF THE BIRTH OF THE HERO 65

cated by them in this fashion, usually under the the influence of
story books. The influence of sex is already evident, in so far
as the boy shows a far greater tendency to harbor hostile feelings
against his father than his mother, with a much stronger inclina- I
tion to emancipate himself from the father than from the mother.
The imaginative faculty of girls is possibly much less active in
this respect. These consciously remembered psychic emotions
of the years of childhood supply the factor which permits the
interpretation of the myth. What is not often consciously re-
membered, but can almost invariably be demonstrated through
psychoanalysis, is the next stage in the development of this
incipient alienation from the parents, which may be designated
by the term Family Romance of Neurotics. The essence of
neurosis, and of all higher mental qualifications, comprises a
special activity of the imagination which is primarily manifested
in the play of the child, and which from about the period pre-
ceding puberty takes hold of the theme of the family relations.
A characteristic example of this special imaginative faculty is
represented by the familiar day dreams, 61 which are continue^
until long after puberty. Accurate observation of these day
dreams shows that they serve for the fulfilment of wishes, fori
the righting of life, and that they have two essential objects, one
erotic, the other of an ambitious nature (usually with the erotic
factor concealed therein). About the time in question the child's
imagination is engaged upon the task of getting rid of the parents,
who are now despised and are as a rule to be supplanted by others
of a higher social rank. The child utilizes an accidental coinci-
dence of actual happenings (meetings with the lord of the manor,
or the proprietor of the estate, in the country; with the reigning
prince, in the city. In the United States with some great states-
man, millionaire). Accidental occurrences of this kind arouse

61 Compare Freud, " Hysterical Fancies, and their Relation to Bi-
sexuality," with references to the literature on this subject. This contri-
bution is contained in the second series of the " Collection of Short Articles
on the Neurosis Doctrine," Vienna and Leipsic, 1909.

66 OTTO RANK

the child's envy, and this finds its expression in fancy fabrics
which replace the two parents by others of a higher rank. The
technical elaboration of these two imaginings, which of course by
this time have become conscious, depends upon the child's adroit-
ness, and also upon the material at his disposal. It likewise
enters into consideration, if these fancies are elaborated with
more or less claim to plausibility. This stage is reached at a time
when the child is still lacking all knowledge of the sexual condi-
tions of descent. With the added knowledge of the manifold
sexual relations of father and mother; with the child's realiza-
tion of the fact that the father is always uncertain, whereas the
mother is very certain — the family romance undergoes a peculiar
restriction; it is satisfied with ennobling the father, while the
descent from the mother is no longer questioned, but accepted
as an unalterable fact. This second (or sexual) stage of the
family romance is moreover supported by another motive, which
did not exist in the first (or asexual) stage. Knowledge of
sexual matters gives rise to the tendency of picturing erotic situa-
tions and relations, impelled by the pleasurable emotion of placing
the mother, or the subject of the greatest sexual curiosity, in
the situation of secret unfaithfulness and clandestine love affairs.
In this way the primary or asexual fantasies are raised to the
standard of the improved later understanding.

The motive of revenge and retaliation, which was originally
to the front, is again evident. These neurotic children are mostly
those who were punished by the parents, to break them of bad
sexual habits, and they take their revenge upon their parents by
their imaginings. The younger children of a family are par-
ticularly inclined to deprive their predecessors of their advantage
by fables of this kind (exactly as in the intrigues of history).
Frequently they do not hesitate in crediting the mother with as
many love affairs as there are rivals. An interesting variation
of this family romance restores the legitimacy of the plotting
hero himself, while the other children are disposed of in this

MYTH OF THE BIRTH OF THE HERO 67

way as illegitimate. The family romance may be governed be-
sides by a special interest, all sorts of inclinations being met by
its adaptability and variegated character. The little romancer
gets rid in this fashion for example of the kinship of a sister,
who may have attracted him sexually.

Those who turn aside with horror from this corruption of
the child mind, or perhaps actually contest the possibility of such
matters, should note that all these apparently hostile imaginings
have not such a very bad significance after all, and that the
original affection of the child for his parents is still preserved
under their thin disguise. The faithlessness and ingratitude on
the part of the child are only apparent, for on investigating in
detail the most common of these romantic fancies, namely the
substitution of both parents, or of the father alone, by more
exalted personages — the discovery will be made that these new
and highborn parents are invested throughout with the qualities
which are derived from real memories of the true lowly parents,
so that the child does not actually remove his father but exalts
him. The entire endeavor to replace the real father by a more
distinguished one is merely the expression of the child's longing
for the vanished happy time, when his father still appeared to be
the strongest and greatest man, and the mother seemed the dearest
and most beautiful woman. The child turns away from the
father, as he now knows him, to the father in whom he believed
in his earlier years, his imagination being in truth only the ex-
pression of regret for this happy time having passed away. Thus
the over-valuation of the earliest years of childhood again claims
its own in these fancies. 62 An interesting contribution to this
subject is furnished by the study of the dreams. Dream-in-
terpretation teaches that even in later years, in the dreams of the
emperor or the empress, these princely persons stand for the

62 For the idealizing of the parents by the children, compare Maeder's
comments (Jahrb. f. Psychoanalyse, p. 152, and Centralblatt f. Psycho-
analyse, I, p. 51) on Varendonk's essay, " Les ideals d'enfant," Tome VII,
1908.

68 OTTO RANK

father and the mother. 63 Thus the infantile over-valuation of the
parents is still preserved in the dream of the normal adult.

As we proceed to fit the above features into our scheme, we
feel justified in analogizing the ego of the child with the hero
of the myth, in view of the unanimous tendency of family
romances and hero myths ; keeping in mind that the myth through-
out reveals an endeavor to get rid of the parents, and that the
same wish arises in the phantasies of the individual child at the
time when it is trying to establish its personal independence.
The ego of the child behaves in this respect like the hero of the
myth, and as a matter of fact, the hero should always be inter-
preted merely as a collective ego, which is equipped with all the
excellences. In a similar manner, the hero in personal poetic
fiction usually represents the poet himself, or at least one side
of his character.

Summarizing the essentials of the hero myth, we find the
descent from noble parents, the exposure in a river, and in a box,
and the raising by lowly parents ; followed in the further evolution
of the story by the hero's return to his first parents, with or
without punishment meted out to them. It is very evident that
the two parent couples of the myth correspond to the real and the
imaginary parent couple of the romantic phantasy. Closer inspec-
tion reveals the psychological identity of the humble and the
noble parents, precisely as in the infantile and neurotic phantasies.

In conformity with the overvaluation of the parents in early
childhood, the myth begins with the noble parents, exactly like the
romantic phantasy, whereas in reality adults soon adapt them-
selves to the actual conditions. Thus the phantasy of the family
romance is simply realized in the myth, with a bold reversal to
the actual conditions. The hostility of the father, and the result-
ing exposure, accentuate the motive which has caused the ego
to indulge in the entire fiction. The fictitious romance is the
excuse, as it were, for the hostile feelings which the child harbors

V 63 JDream Interpretation (Traumdeutung), II ed., p. 200. See Brill's
Translation, Macmillan & Co., 1913.

MYTH OF THE BIRTH OF THE HERO 69

against his father, and which in this fiction are projected against
the father. The exposure in the myth, therefore, is equivalent
to the repudiation or non-recognition in the romantic phantasy.
The child simply gets rid of the father in the neurotic romance,
while in the myth the father endeavors to lose the child. Rescue
and revenge are the natural terminations, as demanded by the
essence of the phantasy.

In order to establish the full value of this parallelization, as
just sketched in its general outlines, it must enable us to interpret
certain constantly recurring details of the myth which seem to
require a special explanation. This demand would seem to ac-
quire special importance in view of the fact that no satisfactory
explanation of these details is forthcoming in the writings of even
the most enthusiastic astral mythologists, or natural philosophers.
Such details are represented by the regular occurrence of dreams
(or oracles), and by the mode of exposure in a box and in the
water. These motives do not at first glance seem to permit a
psychologic derivation. Fortunately the study of dream-sym-
bolisms permits the elucidation of these elements of the hero-
myth. The utilization of the same material in the dreams of
healthy persons and neurotics 64 indicates that the exposure in the
water signifies no more and no less than the symbolic expression^
of birth. The children come out of the " water." 65 The basket,

64 Compare the "birth dreams" in Freud's " Traumdeutung " (see
Brill's translation, Macmillan & Co., p. 207 et seq.), also the examples
quoted by the author in the "Lohengrin saga" (p. 27 et seq.).

C5 In fairy tales, which are adapted to infantile ideation, and especially
to the infantile sexual theories (compare Freud in the December number
of Sexuelle Probleme), the birth of man is frequently represented as a
lifting of the child from a well or a lake (Thimme, /. c, p. 157). The
story of "Dame Holle's Pond" (Grimm, Deutsche Sageh, I, 7) relates
that the newborn children come from her well, whence she brings them
forth. The same interpretation is apparently expressed in certain national
rites ; for example, when a Celt had reason to doubt his paternity, he
placed the newborn child on a large shield and put it "adrift in the nearest
river. If the waves carried it ashore, it was considered as legitimate, but
if the child was drowned, this was proof of the contrary and the mother
was also put to death (see Franz Helbing, "History of Feminine Infidel-
ity"). Additional ethnological material from folklore has been compiled
by the author in his "Lohengrin saga" (p. 20 et seq.).

7° OTTO RANK

box or receptacle 66 simply means the container, the womb; so
that the exposure directly signifies the process of birth, although
it is represented by its opposite.

Those who object to this representation by opposites should
remember how often the dream works with the same mechanism
(compare " Traumdeutung/' II edition, p. 238). A confirmation
of this interpretation of the exposure, as taken from the common
human symbolism, is furnished by the material itself, in the dream
dreamt by the grandfather (or still more convincingly by the
mother herself) 67 in the Ktesian version of Kyros before his

66 The "box" in certain myths is represented by the\cave\ which also
distinctly symbolizes the womb; aside from statements iir* Abraham, Ion,
and others, especially in case of Zeus, who is born in a cave of the Ida
mountains, and nourished by the goat Amalthea, his mother concealing him
for fear of her husband, Kronos. According to Homer's Iliad (XVIII, 396,
et seq.), Hephaistos is also cast into the water by his mother, on account
of his lameness, and remains hidden, for nine years, in a cave surrounded
by water. By exchanging the reversal, the birth (the fall into the water)
is here plainly represented as the termination of the nine months of the
intrauterine life. More common than the cave birth is the exposure in
a box, which is likewise told in the Babylonian Marduk-Tammuz myth,
as well as in the Egyptian-Phoenician Osiris-Adonis myth (compare
Winckler, " Die Weltanschauung des alten Orients, Ex Oriente Lux " I,
1, p. 43, and Jeremias, loc. cit., p. 41). Bacchus, according to Paus, III,
24, is also removed from the persecution of the king, through exposure in
a chest on the Nile, and is saved at the age of three months by a king's
daughter, which is remarkably suggestive of the Moses legend. A similar
story is told of Tennes, the son of Kyknos, who has been mentioned in
another connection (Siecke: Hermes, p. 48, annotation), and of many
others.

The occurrence of the same symbolic representation among the abo-
rigines is illustrated by the following examples : Stucken relates the New
Zealand tale of the Polynesian Fire (and Seed) Robber, Mani-tiki-tiki,
who is exposed directly after his birth, his mother throwing him into the
sea, wrapped in an apron (chest, box). A similar story is reported by
Frobenius (loc. cit., p. 379) from Betsimisaraka, where the child is ex-
posed on the water, and is found and raised by a rich childless woman,
but finally resolves to discover his actual parents. According to a report
of Bab (Zeitschrift fur Ethnologie, 1906, p. 281) the wife of the Raja
Besurjay was presented with a child floating on a bubble of water-foam
(from Singapore).

67 The before-mentioned work of Abraham, " Dreams and Myths,"
pp. 22, 23, English translation, Monograph Series, No. 15, contains the
analysis of a very similar although more complicated birth dream, cor-

MYTH OF THE BIRTH OF THE HERO 7 1

birth; in this dream, so much water flows from the lap of the
expectant mother as to inundate all Asia, like an enormous ocean. 68
It is remarkable that in both cases the Chaldeans correctly inter-
preted these water dreams as birth-dreams. In all probability,
these dreams themselves are constructed out of the knowledge of
a very ancient and universally understood symbolism, with a dim
foresight of the relations and connections which are appreciated
and presented in Freud's teachings. There he says ("Traum-
deutung," 2d edition, p. 199) in referring to a dream in which
the dreamer hurls herself in the dark water of a lake: Dreams of
this sort are birth-dreams, and their interpretation is accomplished
by reversing the fact as communicated in the manifest dream ;
namely, instead of hurling oneself into the water, it means emerg-
ing from the water, i. e. } to be born. 69 The justice of this inter-
responding to the actual conditions; the dreamer, a young pregnant wo-
man, who was awaiting her delivery, not without fear, dreamed of the
birth of her son, and the water appeared directly as the amniotic fluid.

68 This phantasy of an enormous water is extremely suggestive of the
large and widespread group of the Flood Myths, which actually seem to
be no more than the universal expression of the exposure myth. The
hero is here represented by humanity at large. The wrathful father is
the god; the destruction as well as the rescue of humanity likewise follow
one another in immediate succession. In this parallelization, it is of
interest to note that the ark, or pitched house, in which Noah floats upon
the water is designated in the Old Testament by the same word (tebah)
as the receptacle in which the infant Moses is exposed (Jeremias, loc. cit.,
p. 250). For the motive of the great flood, compare Jeremias, p. 226, and
Lessmann, at the close of his treatise on the Kyros saga in Europe, where
the flood is described as a possible digression of the exposure in the water.
A transition instance is illustrated by the flood saga told by Bader, in his
Badensian folk legends. When the Sunken Valley was inundated once
upon a time by a cloudburst, a little boy was seen floating upon the waters
in a cradle, who was miraculously saved by a cat (Gustav Friedrichs, loc.
cit., p. 265).

The author has endeavored to explain the psychological relations be-
tween the exposure-myth, the flood legend, and the devouring myth, in
his article on the " Overlying Symbols in Dream Awakening, and Their
Recurrence in Mythical Ideation" ("Die Symbolschichtung in Wecktraum
und ihre Wiederkehr im mythischen Denken " (Jahrbuch fur Psycho-
analyse, V, 1912).

69 Compare the same reversal of the meanings in Winckler's interpre-
tation of the etymology of the name of Moses (p. 13).

7 2 OTTO RANK

pretation, which renders the water-dream equivalent to the ex-
posure, is again confirmed by the fact that precisely in the
Kyros saga, which contains the water-dream, the motive of the
exposure in the water is lacking, while only the basket, which
does not occur in the dream, plays a part in the exposure.

In this interpretation of the exposure as the birth, we must
not let ourselves be disturbed by the discrepancy in the succession
of the individual elements of the symbolized materialization, with
the real birth process. This chronological rearrangement or even
reversal has been explained by Freud as due to the general man-
ner in which recollections are elaborated into phantasies ; the same
material reappears in the phantasies, but in an entirely novel
arrangement, and no attention whatsoever is paid to the natural
sequence of the acts. 70

Besides this chronological reversal, the reversal of the contents
requires special explanation. The first reason for the representa-
tion of the birth by its opposite, — the life threatening exposure in
the water, is the accentuation of the parental hostility towards the
future hero. 71 The creative influence of this tendency to represent
the parents as the first and most powerful opponents of the hero
will be appreciated, when it is kept in mind that the entire family-
romance W) general owes its origin to the feeling of being neg-
lected, namely the assumed hostility of the parents. In the myth,
this hostility goes so far that the parents refuse to let the child be
born, which is precisely the reason of the hero's lament, more-
over, the myth plainly reveals the desire to enforce his materializa-
tion even against the will of the parents. The vital peril which is

70 The same conditions remain in the formation of dreams and in the
transformation of hysterical phantasies into seizures (compare " Traum-
deutung," p. 238, and the annotation in the same place, also, Freud, "All-
gemeines iiber den hysterischen Anfall" (" General Remarks on Hysterical
Seizures") in Sammlung kleiner Schriften buy Neurosenlehre, 2 Series,
p. 146 et seq.

71 According to a pointed remark of Jung's, this reversal in its further
mythical sublimation permits the approximation of the hero's life to the
solar cycle (" Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido," II Part, Jahrb. f.
Psychoanalyse, V, 1912, p. 253).

MYTH OF THE BIRTH OF THE HERO 73

thus concealed in the representation of birth through exposure,
actually exists in the process of birth itself. The overcoming of
all these obstacles also expresses the idea that the future hero has
actually overcome the greatest difficulties by virtue of his birth,
for he has victoriously thwarted all attempts to prevent it.^J^r
another interpretation may be admitted, according to which the
youthful hero, foreseeing his destiny to taste more than his share
of the bitterness of life, deplores in pessimistic mood the inimical
act which has called him to earth. He accuses the parents, as it
were, for having exposed him to the struggle of life, for having
allowed him to be born. 73 The refusal to let the son be born,
which belongs especially to the father, is frequently concealed by
the contrast motive, the wish for a child (as in (Edipus, Persetts-
and others), while the hostile attitude towards the future successor
on the throne and in the kingdom is projected to the outside,
namely it is attributed to an oracular verdict, which is therein
revealed as the substitute of the ominous dream, or better, as the
equivalent of its interpretation.

From another point of view, however, the family romance
shows that the phantasies of the child, although apparently
estranging the parents, have nought else to say concerning them
besides their confirmation as the real parents. The exposure
myth, translated with the assistance of symbolism, likewise con-

72 The second item of the schedule here enters into consideration : the
voluntary continence or prolonged separation of the parents, which naturally
induces the miraculous conception and virgin birth of the mother. The
abortion phantasies, which are especially distinct in the Zoroaster legend,
also belong under this heading.

73 The comparison of birth with a shipwreck, by the Roman poet
Lucretius, seems to be in perfect harmony with this symbolism: "Behold
the infant: Like a shipwrecked sailor, cast ashore by the fury of the bil-
lows, the poor child lies naked on the ground, bereft of all means for
existence, after Nature has dragged him in pain from the mother's womb.
With plaintive wailing he filleth the place of his birth, and he is right, for
many evils await him in life" (Lucretius, " De Nature Rerum," V, 222-
227). Similarly, the first version of Schiller's "Robbers," in speaking of
Nature, says: "She endowed us with the spirit of invention, when she
exposed us naked and helpless on the shore of the great Ocean, the World.
Let him swim who may, and let the clumsy perish ! "

74 OTTO RANK

tains nothing but the assurance: this is my mother, who has borne
me at the command of the father. But on account of the tendency
of the myth, and the resulting transference of the hostile attitude,
from the child to the parents, this assurance of the real parentage
can only be expressed as the repudiation of such parentage.

On closer inspection, it is noteworthy in the first place that the
hostile attitude of the hero towards his parents concerns especially
the father. Usually, as in the myth of CEdipus, Paris, and others,
the royal father receives a prophecy of some disaster, threatening
him through the expected son; then it is the father who causes
the exposure of the boy and who pursues and menaces him in all
sorts of ways after his unlooked-for rescue, but finally succumbs
to his son, according to the prophecy. In order to understand this
trait, which at first may appear somewhat startling, it is not neces-
sary to explore the heavens for some process into which this trait
might be laboriously fitted. Looking with open eyes and unprej-
udiced minds at the relations between parents and children,
or between brothers such as these exist in reality 74 — a certain
tension is frequntly, if not regularly revealed between father
and son, or still more distinctly a competition between brothers;
although this tension may not be obvious and permanent, it is
lurking in the sphere of the unconscious, as it were, with peri-
odical eruptions. Erotic factors are especially apt to be involved,
and as a rule the deepest, generally unconscious root of the dislike
of the son for the father, or of two brothers for each other, is
referable to the competition for the tender devotion and love of
the mother. The CEdipus myth shows plainly, only in grosser
dimensions, the accuracy of this interpretation, for the parricide
is here followed by the incest with the mother. This erotic rela-
tion with the mother, which predominates in other mythic cycles,
is relegated to the background in the myths of the birth of the

74 Compare the representation of this relation and its psychic conse-
quences, in Freud's Significance of Dreams.

MYTH OF THE BIRTH OF THE HERO 75

hero/ 5 while the opposition against the father is more strongly
accentuated.

The fact that this infantile rebellion against the father is ap-
parently provoked in the birth myths by the hostile behavior of
the father is due to a reversal of the relation, known as projection,
which is brought about by very peculiar characteristics of the
myth forming psychic activity. The projection mechanism, which
also bore its part in the re-interpretation of the birth act, as well
as certain other characteristics of myth formation, to be discussed
presently, — necessitates the uniform characterisation of the myth as
a paranoid structure, in view of its resemblance to peculiar proc-
esses in the mechanism of certain psychic disturbances. Intimately
connected with the paranoid character is the property of separat-
ing or dissociating what is fused in the imagination. This process,
as illustrated by the two parents couples, provides the foundation
for the myth formation, and together with the projection mechan-
ism supplies the key to the understanding of an entire series of

75 Some myths convey the impression as if the love relation with the
mother had been removed, as being too objectionable to the consciousness
of certain periods or peoples. Traces of this suppression are still evident
in a comparison of different myths or different versions of the same myth.
For example, in the version of Herodotus, Kyros is a son of the daughter
of Astyages, but according to the report of Ktesias, he makes the daughter
of Astyages, whom he conquers, his wife, and kills her husband, who in
the rendering of Herodotus is his father. Compare Hiising, " Contribu-
tions to the Kyros Legend," XI. Also a comparison of the saga of Darab,
with the very similar legend of St. Gregory, serves to show that in the
Darab story the incest with the mother is simply omitted, which otherwise
precedes the recognition of the son ; here, on the contrary, the recognition
prevents the incest. This attenuation may be studied in the nascent state,
as it were, in the myth of Telephos, where the hero is married to his
mother, but recognizes her before the consummation of the incest. The
fairy-tale-like setting of the Tristan legend, which makes Isolde draw the
little Tristan from the water (*. e., give him birth), thereby suggests the
fundamental incest theme, which is likewise manifested in the adultery
with the wife of the uncle.

The reader is referred to Rank's paper, " Das Inzest Motiv in Dicht-
ung und Sage" ("The incest motive in fiction and legend"), in which the
incest theme, which is here merely mentioned, is discussed in detail, pick-
ing up the many threads which lead to this theme, but which have been
dropped at the present time.

76 OTTO RANK

otherwise inexplicable configurations of the myth. As the motor
power for this projection of the hero's hostile attitude on to the
father stands revealed the wish for its justification, arising from
the troublesome realization of these feelings against the father.
The displacement process which begins with the projection of the
troublesome sensation is still further continued, however, and
with the assistance of the mechanism of separation or dissociation,
it has found a different expression of its gradual progress in
very characteristic forms of the hero myth. In the original psy-
chologic setting, the father is still identical with the king, the
tyrannical persecutor. The first attenuation of this relation is
manifested in those myths in which the separation of the tyran-
nical persecutor from the real father is already attempted, but not
yet entirely accomplished, the former being still related to the
hero, usually as his grandfather, for example in the Kyros-myth
with all its versions, and in the majority of all hero myths in gen-
eral. In the separation of the father's part from that of the king,
this type signifies the first return step of the descent fantasy
toward the actual conditions, and accordingly the hero's father
appears in this type mostly as a lowly man : See Kyros, Gilgamos
and others. The hero thus arrives again at an approach toward
his parents, the establishment of a certain kinship, which finds its
expression in the fact that not only the hero himself, but also his
father and his mother represent objects of the tyrant's persecu-
tion. The hero in this way acquires a more intimate connection
with the mother (they are often exposed together: Perseus, Tele-
phos, Feridun), who is nearer to him on account of the erotic
relation; while the renouncement of his hatred against the father
here attains the expression of its most forcible reaction, 76 for the
hero henceforth appears, as in the Hamlet saga, not as the perse-
cutor of his father (or grandfather, respectively) but as the
avenger of the persecuted father. This involves a deeper rela-

76 The mechanism of this defense is discussed in Freud's " Hamlet
Analysis" (" Traumdeutung," p. 183, annotation); also by Jones', Am. Jl,
of Psychology, 191 1.

MYTH OF THE BIRTH OF THE HERO JJ

tion of the Hamlet saga with the Iranese story of Kaikhosrav,
where the hero likewise appears as the avenger of his murdered
father (compare Feridun and others).

The person of the grandfather himself, who in certain sagas
appears replaced by other relatives (the uncle, in the Hamlet
saga), also possesses a deeper meaning. 77 The myth complex of
the incest with the mother — and the related revolt against the father
— is here combined with the second great complex, which has for
its contents the erotic relations between father and daughter.
Under this heading belongs besides other widely ramified groups
of sagas (quoted in the author's "Incest Book," Chapter XI),
the story which is told in countless versions of a newborn boy, of
whom it is prophesied that he is to become the son-in-law and
heir of a certain ruler or potentate, and who finally does so in spite
of all persecutions (exposure and so forth) on the part of the
latter. Detailed literary references concerning the wide distri-
bution of this story are found in R. Kohler, " Kleine Schriften,"
II, 357. The father who refuses to give his daughter to any of
her suitors, or who attaches certain conditions difficult of fulfill-
ment to the winning ai the daughter, does this because he really
begrudges her to all others, for when all is told he wishes to
possess her himself. He locks her up in some inaccessible spot,
so as to safeguard her virginity (Perseus, Gilgamos, Telephos,
Romulus), and when his command is disobeyed he pursues the
daughter and her offspring with insatiable hatred. However, the
unconscious sexual motives of his hostile attitude, which is later
on avenged by his grandson, render it evident that again the hero
kills in him simply the man who is trying to rob him of the lave
of his mother : namely the father.

Another attempt at a reversal to a more original type consists
in the following trait: The return to the lowly father, which has

77 In regard to further meanings of the grandfather, compare Freud,
"Analysis of the Phobia of a s-year-old Boy" (Jahrbuch f. Psycho-
analyse, I, 1909, p. 7378 ; also the contributions by Jones, Abraham and
Ferenzi (Internal. Zeitschrift f. arzt. Psychoanalyse, Vol. I, 1913, March
number).

6

7 ^ OTTO RANK

been brought about through the separation of the father's role
from that of the king, is again nullified through the lowly father's
secondary elevation to the rank of a god, as in Perseus and the
other sons of virgin mothers; Kama, Ion, Romulus, Jesus. The
secondary character of this godly paternity is especially evident
in those myths where the virgin who has been impregnated by
divine conception, later on marries a mortal (Jesus, Kama, Ion)
who then appears as the real father, while the god as the father
represents merely the most exalted childish idea of the magni-
tude, power and perfection of the father. 78 At the same time,
these myths strictly insist upon the motive of the virginity of the
mother, which elsewhere is merely hinted at. The first impetus
is perhaps supplied by the transcendental tendency, necessitated
through the introduction of the god. At the same time, the birth
from the virgin is the most abrupt repudiation of the father, the
consummation of the entire myth, as illustrated by the Sargon
legend, which does not admit any father, besides the vestal mother.
The last stage of this progressive attenuation of the hostile
relation to the father is represented by that form of the myth in
which the person of the royal persecutor not only appears entirely
detached from that of the father, but has even lost the remotest
kinship with the hero's family, which he opposes in the most
hostile manner, as its enemy (in Feridun, Abraham, King Herod
against Jesus, and others). Although of his original threefold
character as the father, the king, and the persecutor, he retains
only the part of the royal persecutor or the tyrant, the entire plan
of the myth conveys the impression as if nothing had been
changed, but as if the designation as " father " had been simply
replaced by the term of "tyrant." This interpretation of the

78 A similar identification of the father with God (heavenly father,
etc.) occurs, according to F.reud, with the same regularity in the fantasies
of normal and pathological psychic activity as the identification of the
emperor with the father. It is also noteworthy in this connection that
almost all peoples derive their origin from their god (Abraham, " Dream
and Myth," Monograph Series, No. 15)-

MYTH OF THE BIRTH OF THE HERO 79

father as a "tyrant" which is typical of the infantile ideation, 79
will be found later on to possess the greatest importance for the
interpretation of certain abnormal constellations of this complex.

The prototype of this identification of the king with the father,
which regularly recurs also in the dreams of adults, presumably
is the origin of royalty from the patriarchate in the family, which
is still attested by the use of identical words for king and father,
in the Hindoo-Germanic languages 80 (compare the German
" Landesvater," father of his country, = king). The reversal of
the family romance to actual conditions is almost entirely accom-
plished in this type of myth. The lowly parents are acknowl-
edged with a frankness which seems to be directly contradictory
to the tendency of the entire myth.

Precisely this revelation of the real conditions, which hitherto
had to be left to the interpretation, enables us to prove the
accuracy of the latter from the material itself. The biblical
Moses-legend has been selected, as especially well adapted to this
purpose.

Briefly summarizing the outcome of the previous interpreta-
tion-mechanism, to make matters plainer, we find the two parent-
couples to be identical, after their splitting into the personalities
of the father and the tyrannical persecutor has been connected;
the high born parents being the echo, as it were, of the exaggerated
notions which the child originally harbored concerning its parents.
The Moses-legend actually shows the parents of the hero divested
of all prominent attributes; they are simple people, devotedly at-
tached to the child, and incapable of harming it. Meanwhile, the
assertion of tender feelings for the child is a confirmation, here as

79 An amusing example of unconscious humor in children recently
ran through the daily press : A politician had explained to his little son
that a tyrant is a man who forces others to do what he commands, without
heeding their wishes in the matter. "Well," said the child, "then you and
mamma are also tyrants ! "

80 See Max Miiller, " Essais," Vol. II (Leipzig, 1869), p. 20 et seq.
Concerning the various psychological contingencies of this setting, com-
pare p. 83 et al. of the author's " Incest Book."

80 OTTO RANK

well as everywhere, of the bodily parentage (compare Akki, the
gardener, in the Gilgamos-legend ; the teamster, in the story of
Kama; the fisher, in the Perseus myth, etc.). The amicable
utilization of the exposure motive, which occurs in this type of
myth, is referable to such a relationship. The child is surrendered
in a basket to the water, but not with the object of killing it (as
for example the hostile exposure of QEdipus and many other
heroes), but for the purpose of saving it (compare also Abra-
ham's early history, p. 15). The danger fraught warning to the
exalted father becomes a hopeful prophecy for the lowly father
(compare, in the birth story of Jesus, the oracle for Herod and
Joseph's dream), entirely corresponding to the expectations placed
by most parents in the career of their offspring.

Retaining from the original tendency of the romance, the fact
that Bitiah, Pharaoh's daughter, drew the child from the water,
i. e.j gave it birth, the outcome is the familiar theme (grand-
father type) of the king, whose daughter is to bear a son, but who
on being warned by the ill-omened interpretation of a dream,
resolves to kill his forthcoming grandson. The handmaiden of
his daughter (who in the biblical story draws the box from the
water, at the behest of the princess), is charged by the king with
the exposure of the newborn child in a box, in the waters of the
river Nile, that it may perish (the exposure motive, from the
viewpoint of the highborn parents, here appearing in its original
disastrous significance). The box with the child is then found by
lowly people, and the poor woman raises the child (as his wet
nurse), and when he is grown up he is recognized by the princess
as her son (just as in the prototype the phantasy concludes with
the recognition by the highborn parents).

If the Moses-legend were placed before us in this more orig-
inal form, as we have reconstructed it from the existing material, 81

81 Compare E. Meyer (Bericht d. Kgl. preuss. Akad. d. Wiss., XXXI,
1905, p. 640). The Moses legends and the Levites : "Presumably Moses
was originally the son of the tyrant's daughter (who is now his foster
mother), and probably of divine origin." The subsequent elaboration into
the present form is probably referable to national motives.

MYTH OF THE BIRTH OF THE HERO 8 I

the sum of this interpretation-mechanism would be approximately
what is told in the myth as it is actually transmitted ; namely that
his true mother was not a princess, but the poor woman who was
introduced as his nurse, her husband being his father.

This interpretation is offered as the tradition, in the re-con-
verted myth;, and the fact that this tracing of the progressive
mutation furnishes the familiar type of hero myth, is the proof
for the correctness of our interpretation.

It has thus been our good fortune to show the full accuracy
of our interpretative technique upon the material itself, and it is
now time to demonstrate the tenability of the general viewpoint
upon which this entire technique is founded. Hitherto, the
results of our interpretation have created the appearance of the
entire myth formation as starting from the hero himself, namely
from the youthful hero. At the start we took this attitude in
analogizing the hero of the myth with the ego of the child. Now
we find ourselves confronted with the obligation to harmonize
these assumptions and conclusions with the other conceptions of
myth formation, which they seem to directly contradict.

The myths are certainly not constructed by the hero, least
of all by the child hero, but they have long been known to be
the product of a people of adults. The impetus is evidently sup-
plied by the popular amazement at the apparition of the hero,
whose extraordinary life history the people can only imagine as
ushered in by a wonderful infancy. This extraordinary child-
hood of the hero, however, is constructed by the individual myth-
makers — to whom the indefinite idea of the folk-mind must be
ultimately traced — from the consciousness of their own infancy.
In investing the hero with their own infantile history, they
identify themselves with him, as it were, claiming to have been
similar heroes in their own personality. The true hero of the
romance is, therefore, the ego, which finds itself in the hero, by
reverting to the time when the ego was itself a hero, through its
first heroic act, i. e. y the revolt against the father. The ego can

82 OTTO RANK

only find its own heroism in the days of infancy, and it is therefore
obliged to invest the hero with its own revolt, crediting him with
the features which made the ego a hero. This object is achieved
with infantile motives and materials, in reverting to the infantile
romance and transferring it to the hero. Myths are, therefore,
created by adults, by means of retrograde childhood fantasies, 82
the hero being credited with the myth-maker's personal infantile
history. Meanwhile the tendency of this entire process is the
excuse of the indiydual units of the people for their own infantile
revolt against the father.

Besides the excuse of the hero for his rebellious revolt, the
myth therefore contains also the excuse of the individual for his
revolt against the father. This revolt had burdened him since
his childhood, as he had failed to become a hero. He is now
enabled to excuse himself by emphasizing that the father has
given him grounds for his hostility. The affectionate feeling for
the father is also manifested in the same fiction, as has been
shown above. These myths have therefore sprung from two
opposite motives, both of which are subordinate to the motive
of vindication of the individual through the hero : on the one
hand the motive of affection and gratitude towards the parents;
and on the other hand, the motive of the revolt against the
father. It is not stated outright in these myths, however, that the
conflict with the father arises from the sexual rivalry for the
mother, but is apparently suggested that this conflict dates back
primarily to the concealment of the sexual processes (at child-
birth), which in this way became an enigma for the child. This
enigma finds its temporary and symbolical solution in the in-
fantile sexual theory of the basket and the water. 83

82 This idea which is derived from the knowledge of the neurotic
fantasy and symptom construction, was applied by Professor Freud to the
interpretation of the romantic and mythical work of poetic imagination,
in a lecture entitled: " Der Dichter und das Phantasieren " (Poets and
Imaginings) (Reprint, 2d series of Collected Short Articles), p. 1970.

83 For ethno-psychologic parallels and other infantile sexual theories
which throw some light upon the supplementary myth of the hero's pro-
creation compare the author's treatise in Zentralblatt fur Psychoanalyse,
II, 191 1, pp. 392-4 2 5.

MYTH OF THE BIRTH OF THE HERO 83

The profound participation of the incest motive in myth
formation is discussed in the author's special investigation of
the Lohengrin saga, which belongs to the myth of the birth of the
hero. The cyclic character of the Lohengrin saga is referred
by him to the fantasy of being one's own son, as revealed by
Freud (p. 131; compare also pp. 96 and"~99o). This accounts
for the identity of father and son, in certain myths, the repeti-
tion of their careers; the fact that the hero is sometimes not
exposed until he has reached maturity, also the intimate con-
nection between birth and death, in the exposure-motive. (Con-
cerning the water as the water of death, compare especially
chapter IV of the Lohengrin saga.) Jung, who regards the
typical fate of the hero as the portrayal of the human libido and
its typical vicissitudes, has made this theme the pivot of his in-
terpretation, as the fantasy of being born again, to which the
incest motive is subordinated. Not only the birth of the hero,
which takes place under peculiar symbolic circumstances, but also
the motive of the two mothers of the hero, are explained by
Jung through the birth of the hero taking place under the
mysterious ceremonials of a re-birth from the mother consort
('■ c., p. 356).

Having thus outlined the contents of the birth myth of the

hero it still remains for us to point out certain complications

within the birth myth itself, which have been explained on the

basis of its paranoid character, as "splits" of the personality of

the royal father and persecutor. In some myths, however, and

especially in the fairy tales which belong to this group, 84 the

84 The fairy tales, which have been left out of consideration in the
context, precisely on account of these complications, include especially:
"The Devil with the Three Golden Hairs" (Grimm, No. 29), and the
very similar "Saga of Emperor Henry III" (Grimm, Deutsche Sagen, II,
P- I77)> "Water-Peter," with numerous variations (Grimm, III, p. 103),
" Fundevogel," No. 51, "The Three Birdies" (No. 96), "The King of
the Golden Mountain" (No. 92), with its parallels, as well as some for-
eign fairy tales, which are quoted by Bauer, at the end of his article.
Compare also, in Hahn, "Greek and Albanese Fairy Tales" (Leipsic,
1864), the review of the exposure stories and myths, especially 20 and 69.

84 OTTO RANK

multiplication of mythical personages, and with them, of course,
the multiplication of motives, or even of entire stories, are carried
so far that sometimes the original features are altogether over-
grown by these addenda. The multiplication is so variegated
and so exuberantly developed, that the mechanism of the analysis
no longer does it justice. Moreover, the new personalities here
do not show the same independence, as it were, as the new person-
alities created by splitting, but they rather present the character-
istics of a copy, a duplicate, or a " double," which is the proper
mythological term. An apperently very complicated example,
namely, Herodotus' version of the Kyros saga, illustrates that
these doubles are not inserted purely for ornamentation, or to
give a semblance of historical veracity, but that they are insolubly
connected with the myth- formation and its tendency. Also, in
the Kyros-myth, as in the other myths, the royal grandfather,
Astyages, and his daughter, with her husband, are confronted by
the cattle-herder and his wife. A checkered gathering of other
personalities which move around them, are readily grouped at
sight : Between the high born parent couple and their child stand
the administrator Harpagos with his wife and his son, and the
noble Artembares with his legitimate offspring. Our trained
sense for the peculiarities of myth-structure recognizes at once
the doubles of the parents in the intermediate parent-couples and
all the participants are seen to be identical personalities of the
parents and their child; this interpretation being suggested by
certain features of the myth itself. Harpagos receives the child
from the king, to expose it; he therefore acts precisely like the
royal father and remains true to his fictitious paternal part in his
reluctance to kill the child himself — because it is related to him —
but he delivers it instead to the herder Mithradates, who is thus
again identified with Harpagos. The noble Artembares, whose
son Kyros causes to be whipped, is also identified with Harpagos ;
for when Artembares with his whipped boy stands before the
king, to demand retribution, Harpagos at once is likewise seen
standing before the king, to defend himself, and he also is

MYTH OF THE BIRTH OF THE HERO 85

obliged to present his son to the king. Thus Artembares himself
plays an episodal part as the hero's father, and this is fully con-
firmed by the Ktesian version, which tells us that the nobleman
who adopted the herder's son, Kyros, as his own son, was named
Artembares.

Even more distinct than the identity of the different fathers is
that of their children, which of course serves to confirm the
identity of the fathers. In the first place, and this would seem to
be conclusive, the children are all of the same age. Not only the
son of the princess, and the child of the herder, who are born
at the same time; but Herodotus specially emphasizes that Kyros
played the game at kings, in which he caused the son of Artem-
bares to be whipped, with boys of the same age. He also points
out, perhaps intentionally, that the son of Harpagos, destined to
become the playmate of Kyros, whom the king had recognized,
was likewise apparently of the same age as Kyros. Furthermore,
the remains of this boy are placed before his father, Harpagos,
in a basket, it was also a basket in which the newborn Kyros was
to have been exposed, and this actually happened to his substitute,
the herder's son, whose identity with Kyros is obvious and
tangible in the report of Iustin, p. 34. In this report, Kyros is
actually exchanged with the living child of the herders; but this
paradoxical parental feeling is reconciled by the consciousness
that in reality nothing at all has been altered by this exchange.
It appears more intelligible, of course, that the herder's wife
should wish to raise the living child of the king, instead of her
own stillborn boy, as in the Herodotus version; but here the
identity of the boys is again evident, for just as the herder's son
suffered death instead of Kyros in the past, twelve years later
the son of Harpagos (also in the basket) is killed directly for
Kyros, whom Harpagos had allowed to live. 85

85 A connection is here supplied with the motive of the twins, in which
we seem to recognize the two boys born at the same time, one of which
dies for the sake of the other, be it directly after birth, or later, and whose
parents appear divided in our myths into two or more parent couples.
Concerning the probable significance of this shadowy twin-brother as the
after-birth, compare the author's discussion in his Incest Book (p. 457, etc.).

86 OTTO RANK

The impression is thereby conveyed that all the multiplica-
tions of Kyros, after having been created for a certain purpose,
are again removed, as disturbing elements, once this purpose has
been fulfilled. This purpose is undoubtedly the exalting tend-
ency which is inherent to the family romance. The hero in the
various duplications of himself and his parents, ascends the social
scale from the herder Mithradates, by way of the noble Artem-
bares, who is high in the king's favor, and of the first admin-
istrator, Harpagos, who is personally related to the king — until
he -has himself become a prince; so his career is exposed in the
Ktesian version, where Kyros advances from the herder's son to
the king's administrator. 86 In this way, he constantly removes,
as it were, the last traces of his ascent, the lower Kyros being dis-
carded after absolving the different stages of his career. 87

86 The early history of Sigurd, as it is related in the Volsunga Saga
(compare Rassmann, I, 99), closely resembles the Ktesian version of the
Kyros saga, giving us the tradition of another hero's wonderful career,
together with its rational rearrangement. For particulars, see Bauer, p.
554. Also the biblical history of Joseph (1 Moses, 37, et seq.), with the
exposure, the animal sacrifice, the dreams, the sketchy brethren, and the
fabulous career of this hero, seem to belong to this type of myth.

87 In order to avoid misunderstandings, it appears necessary to em-
phasize at this point the historical nucleus of certain hero-myths. Kyros,
as is shown by the inscriptions which have been discovered (compare
Duncker, p. 289, Bauer, p. 498), was descended from an old hereditary
royal house. It could not be the object of the myth to elevate the descent
of Kyros, nor must the above interpretation be regarded as an attempt
to establish a lowly descent of Kyros. Similar conditions prevail in the
case of Sargon, whose royal father is also known (compare Jeremias, p.
410, annotation). Nevertheless, an historian writes about Sargon as follows
(Ungnad, "Die Anfange der Staatenbildung in Babylonien " (Beginnings
of State Formation in Babylonia), Deutsche Rundschau, July, 1905) : "He
was evidently not of noble descent, or no such saga could have been woven
about his birth and his youth." It would be a gross error to consider our
interpretation as an argument in this sense. Again, the apparent contra-
diction which might be held up against our explanation, under another
mode of interpretation, becomes the proof of its correctness, through the
reflection that it is not the hero, but the average man who makes the myth,
and wishes to vindicate himself in the same. The people imagine the hero
in this manner, investing him with their own infantile fantasies, irre-
spective of their actual compatibility or incompatibility with historical
facts. This also serves to explain the transference of the typical motives,
be it to several generations of the same hero family, or be it to historical
personalities in general (concerning Caesar, Augustus and others, com-
pare Usener, Rhein. Mus. LV, p. 271).

MYTH OF THE BIRTH OF THE HERO 87

This complicated myth with its promiscuous array of person-"^
ages is thus simplified and reduced to three actors, namely the
hero and his parents. Entirely similar conditions prevail in re-
gard to the " cast " of many other myths. For example, the
duplication may concern the daughter, as in the Moses myth, in
which the princess mother (in order to establish the identity of
the two families) 88 appears among the poor people as the daughter
Miriam, who is merely a split of the mother, the latter appearing
divided into the princess and the poor woman. In case the
duplication concerns the father, his doubles appear as a rule in
the part of relatives, more particularly as his brothers, as for
example in the Hamlet saga, in distinction from the foreign
personages created by the analysis. In a similar way, the grand-
father, who is taking the place of the father, may also appear
complemented 'by a brother, who is the hero's grand uncle, and as
such his opponent, as in the myths of Romulus, Perseus and
others. Other duplications, in apparently complicated mythical
structures, as for example in Kaikhosrav, Feridun, and others,
are easily recognized when envisaged from this angle.

The duplication of the fathers, or the grandfathers, respec-
tively, by a brother may be continued in the next generation, and
concern the hero himself, thus leading to the brother myths,
which can only be' hinted at in connection with the present theme.
The prototypes of the boy, who in the Kyros saga vanish into
thin air after they have served their purpose, namely the exalta-
tion of the hero's descent, if they were to assume a vitality of
their own, would come to confront the hero as competitors with
equal rights, namely as his brothers. The original sequence is
probably better preserved through the interpretation of the hero's
strange doubles as shadowy brothers, who like the twin brother,

88 This identification of the families is carried through to the minutest
detail in certain myths, as for example in the CEdipus myth, where one
royal couple is offset by another, and where even the herdsman who re-
ceives the infant for exposure has his exact counterpart in the herdsman to
whom he entrusts the rescue of the boy.

88 OTTO RANK

must die for the hero's sake. Not only the father, who is in the
way of the maturing son, but also the interfering competitor, or
the brother, are removed, in a naive realization of the childish
fantasies, for the simple reason that the hero does not want a
family.

The complications of the hero myth with other myth cycles
include, besides the myth of the hostile brothers, which has
already been disposed of, also the actual incest myth, such as
forms the nucleus of the CEdipus myth. The mother, and her
relation to the hero, appear relegated to the background in the
myth of the birth of the hero. But there is another conspicuous
motive, meaning that the lowly mother is so often represented by
an animal. This motive of the helpful animals 89 belongs in part to
a series of foreign elements, the explanation of which would far
exceed the scope of this essay. 90

The animal motive may be fitted into the sequence of our
interpretation, on the basis of the following reflections. In a
similar way as the projection on to the father justifies the hostile
attitude on the part of the son, so the lowering of the mother into
an animal is likewise meant to vindicate the ingratitude of the
son, who denies her. In a similar way as the detachment of
the persecuting king from the father, the exclusive role of a wet
nurse, alloted to the mother, in this substitution by an animal,
goes back to the separation of the mother into the parts of the
child bearer and the suckler. This cleavage is again subservient
to the exalting tendency, in so far as the child bearing part is
reserved for the high born mother, whereas the lowly woman,

89 Compare Gubernatis, Zoological Mythology, London, 1872 (In Ger-
man by Hartmann: Die Tiere in der indogermanischen Mythologie. Leip-
zig, 1874). Concerning the significance of animals in exposure myths, see
also the contributions by Bauer (p. 574 et seq.), Goldziher (p. 274) and
Liebrecht: Zur Volkskunde (Romulus und die Welfen) (Folk Lore, Romu-
lus and the Whelps), Heilbronn, 1879.

90 Compare Freud's article on The Infantile Recurrence of Totemism
(Imago, Vol. II, 1913). Concerning the totemistic foundation of the Roman
she-wolf, compare Jones' Nightmare (Alptraum), p. 59 et seq. The wood-
pecker of the Romulus saga was discussed by Jung (loc. cit., p. 382 et seq.).

MYTH OF THE BIRTH OF THE HERO 89

who cannot be eradicated from the early history, must content
herself with the function of a nurse. Animals are especially
appropriate substitutes, because the sexual processes are here
plainly evident also to the child, while the concealment of these
processes is presumably the root of the childish revolt against the
parents. The exposure in the box and in the water asexualizes
the birth process, as it were, in a childlike fashion; the children
are fished out of the water by the stork, 91 who takes them to
the parents in a basket. The animal fable improves upon this
idea, by emphasizing the similarity between human birth and
animal birth.

This introduction of the motive may possibly be interpreted
from the parodistic point of view, if we assume that the child
accepts the story of the stork from the parents, feigning ignor-
ance, but adding superciliously: If an animal has brought me, it
may also have nursed me. 02

When all is said and done, however, and when the cleavage is
followed back, this separation of the child bearer from the

91 The stork is known also in mythology as the bringer of children.
Siecke (Liebesgesch. d. Himmels, p. 26) points out the swan as the player
of this part in certain regions and countries. The rescue and further pro-
tection of the hero by a bird is not uncommon; compare Gilgamos, Zal and
Kyknos, who is exposed by his mother near the sea and is nourished by a
swan, while his son Tennes floats in a chest upon the water. The interpre-
tation of the leading motive of the Lohengrin saga also enters into present
consideration. Its most important motives belong to this mythical cycle:
Lohengrin floats in a skiff upon the water, and is brought ashore by a
swan. No one may ask whence he has come: the sexual mystery of the
origin of man must not be revealed but it is replaced by the suggestion of
the stork fable: the children are fished from the water by the swan and are
taken to the parents in a box. Corresponding to the prohibition of all
enquiries in the Lohengrin saga, we find in other myths (for example, the
CEdipus myth), a command to investigate, or a riddle which must be
solved. For the psychological significance of the stork fable, compare
Freud, Infantile Sexual Theories. Concerning the Hero Myth, compare
the author's extensive contribution to the elaboration of the motives and
the interpretation of the Lohengrin saga (Heft 13 of this collection, Vienna
and Leipzig, 1911).

02 Compare Freud: Analysis of the Phobia of a five year old Boy.
Jahrbuch f. psychoanalyt. u. psychopath. Forschungen, Vol. I, 1909.

9° OTTO RANK

stickler — which really endeavors to remove the bodily mother
entirely, by means of her substitution through an animal or a
strange nurse — does not express anything beyond the fact : The
woman who has suckled me is my mother. This statement is
found directly symbolized in the Moses legend, the retrogressive
character of which we have already studied; for precisely the
woman who is his own mother is chosen to be his nurse [similarly
also in the myth of Herakles, and in the Egyptian-Phenician
Osiris-Adonis myth, where Osiris, encased in a chest, floats down
the river to Phenicia, and is finally found under the name Adonis,
by Isis, who is installed by Queen Astarte as the nurse of her
own son]. 08

Only a brief reference can here be made to other motives
which seem to be more loosely related to the entire myth. Such
motives include that of playing the fool, which is suggested in
animal fables as the universal childish attitude towards the grown
ups; furthermore, the physical defects of certain heroes [Zal,
CEdipus, Hephaistos], which are perhaps meant to serve for the
vindication of individual imperfections, in such a way that the
reproaches of the father for possible defects or shortcomings are
incorporated in the myth, with the appropriate accentuation, the
hero being endowed with the same weakness which burdens the
self-respect of the individual.

This explanation of the psychological significance of the myth
of the birth of the hero would not be complete without emphasiz-
ing its relations to certain mental diseases. Also readers with-
out psychiatric training — or these perhaps more than any others,
must have 'been struck with these relations. As a matter of fact,
the hero myths are equivalent in many essential features to the

93 Usener (Stoff des griechischen Epos, S. 53 — Subject Matter of Greek
Epics, p. 53) says that the controversy between the earlier and the later
Greek sagas concerning the mother of a divinity is usually reconciled by
the formula that the mother of the general Greek saga is recognized as
such while the mother of the local tradition is lowered to the rank of a
nurse. Thero may therefore be unhesitatingly regarded as the mother,
not merely the nurse of the god Ares.

MYTH OF THE BIRTH OF THE HERO 9 1

delusional ideas of certain psychotic individuals, who suffer from
delusions of persecution and grandeur, — the so called paranoiacs.
Their system of delusions is constructed very much like the hero
myth, and therefore indicates the same psychogenic motives as
the neurotic family romance, which is analysable, whereas the
system of delusions is inaccessible even for psychoanalytical ap-
proaches. For example, the paranoiac is apt to claim that the
people whose name he bears are not his real parents, but that he
is actually the son of a princely personage ; he was to be removed
for some mysterious reason, and was therefore surrendered to his
" parents " as a foster child. His enemies, however, wish to
maintain the fiction that he is of lowly descent, in order to sup-
press his legitimate pretensions to the crown or to enormous
riches. 94 Cases of this kind often occupy alienists or tribunals. 95

94 Abraham, he. cit., p. 40; Riklin, loc. cit., p. 74.

95 Brief mention is made of a case concerning a Mrs. v. Hervay, be-
cause of a few subtle psychological comments upon the same, by A. Berger
(Feuilleton der Neue Freie Presse, Nov. 6, 1904, No. 14,441) which in
part touch upon our interpretation of the hero myth. Berger writes as
follows: "I am convinced that she seriously believes herself to be the ille-
gitimate daughter of an aristocratic Russian lady. The desire to belong
through birth to more distinguished and brilliant circles than her own sur-
roundings probably dates back to her early years; and her wish to be a
princess gave rise to the delusion that she was not the daughter of her
parents, but the child of a noblewoman who had concealed her illegitimate
offspring from the world by letting her grow up as the daughter of a
sleight-of-hand man. Having once become entangled in these fancies, it
was natural for her to interpret any harsh word that offended her, or any
accidental ambigous remark that she happened to hear, but especially her
reluctance to be the daughter of this couple, as a confirmation of her
romantic delusion. She therefore made it the task of her life to regain
the social position of which she felt herself to have been defrauded. Her
biography manifests the strenuous insistence upon this idea, with a tragic
outcome."

The female type of the family romance, as it confronts us in this case
from the a-social side, has also been transmitted as a hero myth in isolated
instances. The story goes of the later Queen Semiramis (in Diodos, II,
4) that her mother, the goddess Derketo, being ashamed of her, exposed
the child in a barren and rocky land, where she was fed by doves and
found by shepherds, who gave the infant to the overseer of the royal
flocks, the childless Simmas, who raised her as his own daughter. He
named her Semiramis, which means Dove in the Syrian language. Her

9 2 OTTO RANK

This intimate relationship between the hero myth and the de-
lusional structure of paranoiacs has already been definitely estab-
lished through the characterization of the myth as a paranoid
structure, which is here confirmed by its contents. The remark-
able fact that paranoiacs will frankly reveal their entire romance
has ceased to be puzzling, since the profound investigations of
Freud have shown that the contents of hysterical fantasies, which
can often be made conscious through analysis, are identical up
to the minutest details with the complaints of persecuted para-
noiacs ; moreover, the identical contents are also encountered as
a reality, in the arrangements of perverts for the gratification
of their desires. 96

The egotistical character of the entire system is distinctly re-
vealed by the paranoiac, for whom the exaltation of the parents,
as brought about by him, is merely the means for his own exalta-
tion. As a rule the pivot for his entire system is simply the
culmination of the family romance, in the apoditic statement: I
am the emperor (or god). Reasoning in the symbolism of
dreams and myths, which is also the symbolism of all fancies, in-
cluding the "morbid" power of imagination — all he accomplishes
thereby is to put himself in the place of the father, just as the
hero terminates his revolt against the father. This can be done
in both instances, because the conflict with the father — which
dates back to the concealment of the sexual processes, as sug-
gested by the latest discoveries — is nullified at the instant when
the grown boy himself becomes a father. The persistence with
which the paranoiac puts himself in the father's place, i. e., be-
comes a father himself, appears like an illustration to the common

further career, up to her autocratic rulership, thanks to her masculine
energy, is a matter of history.

Other exposure myths are told of Atalante, Kybele, and Aerope (v.
Roscher).

96 Freud : Three Contributions to the Sexual Theory, Nervous and
Mental Disease Monograph, No. 7- Also: Psychopathologie des Altags-
lebens, II ed., Berlin, 1909. Also: Hysterische Phantasien und ihre Be-
ziehung zur Bisexualitat.

MYTH OF THE BIRTH OF THE HERO 93

answer of little boys to a scolding or a putting off of their inquisi-
tive curiosity: You just wait until I am a papa myself, and I'll
know all about it!

Besides the paranoiac, his equally a-social counterpart must
also be emphasized. In the expression of the identical fantasy
contents, the hysterical individual who has suppressed them, is
offset by the pervert, who realizes them, and even so the diseased
and passive paranoiac — who needs his delusion for the correction
of the actuality, which to him is intolerable — is offset by the
active criminal, who endeavors to change the actuality according
to his mind. In this special sense, this type is represented by
the anarchist. The hero himself, as shown by his detachment
from the parents, begins his career in opposition to the older
generation ; he is at once a rebel, a renovator, and a revolutionary.
However, every revolutionary is originally a disobedient son, a
rebel against the father. 97 (Compare the suggestion of Freud,
in connection with the interpretation of a " revolutionary dream."
Traumdeutung, II edition, p. 153. See English translation by
Brill. Macmillan. Annotation.)

But whereas the paranoiac, in conformity with his passive
character, has to suffer persecutions and wrongs which ultimately
proceed from fhe father, and which he endeavors to escape by
putting himself in the place of the father or the emperor — the
anarchist complies more faithfully with the heroic character, by
promptly himself becoming the persecutor of kings, and finally
killing the king, precisely like the hero. The remarkable simi-
larity between the career of certain anarchistic criminals and the
family romance of hero and child has been illustrated by the

97 This is especially evident in the myths of the Greek gods, where the
son (Kronos, Zeus) must first remove the father, before he can enter
upon his rulership. The form of the removal, namely through castration,
obviously the strongest expression of the revolt against the father, is at the
same time the proof of its sexual provenance. Concerning the revenge
character of this castration, as well as the infantile significance of the
entire complex, compare Freud, Infantile Sexual Theories and Analysis
of the Phobia of a five year old Boy (Jahrbuch f. Psychoanalyse).

94 OTTO RANK

author, through special instances (Belege zur Rettungsphantasie,
Zentralblatt f. Psychoanalyse, I, 1911, p. 331, and Die Rolle des
Familienromans in der Psychologie des Attentaters, Internationale
Zeitschrift fur aerztliche Psychoanalyse, I, 1913). The truly
heroic element then consists only in the real justice or even
necessity of the act, which is therefore generally endorsed and
admired; 98 while the morbid trait, also in criminal cases, is the
pathologic transference of the hatred from the father to the real
king, or several kings, when more general and still more distorted.

As the hero is commended for the same deed, without asking
for its psychic motivation, so the anarchist might claim indulgence
from the severest penalties, for the reason that he has killed an
entirely different person from the one he really intended to de-
stroy, in spite of an apparently excellent perhaps political motiva-
tion of his act."

For the present let us stop at the narrow boundary line where
the contents of innocent infantile imaginings, suppressed and un-
conscious neurotic fantasies, poetical myth structures, and cer-
tain forms of mental disease and crime lie close together, although
far apart as to their causes and dynamic forces. We resist the
temptation to follow one of these divergent paths which lead to
altogether different realms, but which are as yet unblazed trails
in the wilderness.

98 Compare the contrast between Tell and Parricida, in Schiller's Wil-
helm Tell, which is discussed in detail in the author's Incest Book.

99 Compare in this connection the unsuccessful homicidal attempt of
Tatjana Leontiew, and its subtle psychological illumination in Wittels :
Die sexuelle Not (Vienna and Leipzig, 1909).

INDEX

PAGE

ABRAHAM 15

Aleos 21

Alkmene 45

Akrisios 22

Ambivalence 70

Amphion and Zetos 43

Anarchist 93

Animal motives 88

Apollo 17

Artembares 29

Arthurian legends 55

Astyages 29

Attenuation of myth 78

Auge 22

BABYLONIAN myths 12

Beating 56

Beowulf 60

Birth symbols 69

Blancheflure 38

Borrowing theories 2

Box 69

Bride true 40

Brother myths 87

Brothers, hostility of 88

Buddha 53

CHILD psyche and myth formation 63

Childhood of hero 81

Conflict of younger and older generations 64

Content reversals 72

Criminality and myths 93

Criticism of parents 64

95

9*> OTTO RANK

PAGE

DARAB 19

Daughter father 77

Delusion formation 91

Dirke 46

Displacements in myths 76

Dream and myth 69

Dreams of water 71

Dughda Si

Duplication 87

EGOTISM motives 92

Elsa 56

Erotic factors 74

Exposure myths 72, 73

FAMILY relations 62

Family romance of neurotics 65

Father and hero 61

Father and tyrant 76

Father daughter 77

Father replacement 67

Feridun , . . 37

Flood myths 25, 34

Fool motive 90

GILGAMOS 23, 79

Grandfather replacement 77

HAMLET 76

Harpagos 26, 27, 28

Hekabe 20

Hercules 44

Hero and father 61

Hero and mother 61

Hero myth, summary of 67

Herod 50

Horn 55

Hostile brothers 88

Hostility motives 74

MYTH OF THE RIRTH OF THE HERO 97

PAGE

Hysteria and myth 92

Hysterical fantasies 9 2

INCEST motive in myth 83

Infantile imagination 62

Infantile psyche and myth 9, 10

Infantile sexual theory 82

Interpretation summary 79

Ion 17

Iranese legends 19, 36, 37

Isaac 15

Isolde 38, 39

JESUS 47, 48, 49, et seq.

Judas myth 19

KAIKAUS 36

Kaikhosrav 35

Kamleyses 25

Kama IS

Krishna 47

Kyros 24, 89

Kyros myth, versions of 24, 32, 33

Kunti „. 16

LOHENGRIN 55, 58

Lunar myths 5

MANDANE 25

Migration theories 2

Moses 13, 79

Mother and hero 61

Myth and hysterical fancy 92

Myth and infantile psyche 9, 10

Myths and paranoid mechanisms 75

Myth and race 11

Myth and sex 65

Myth, complications of 83

Myth contents 4, 6

98 OTTO RANK

PAGE

Myth displacements 76

Myth distribution 4

Myth, evolution of 8

Myth formation and child psyche 6$

Myth ground plan 61

Myth interpretation 5

Myth of hero, summary of 67

Myth, psychological significance of 90

Myth structure and psychoneuroses 63

Myth, type of '. 61

Mythological theories I, 3

NEUROTIC family romance 65

Neurotics 64

Nightmares 7

CEDIPUS 74

CEdipus myth 6, 18

Old age and youth 64

Opposites 70

Oriant 56

PARANOID delusions 91

Paranoid mechanism in myths 75

Parental authority 63

Parental criticism 64

Parents, fancied 73

Parents, real 73

Paris 20

Perseus 22

Persian myths 37

Persian war 32

Pharaoh 80

Priamos 20

Pritha 16

Proca 42

Proj ection 75

Psychological significance of myth 9°

MYTH OF THE BIRTH OF THE HERO 99

PAGE

Psychoneuroses and myth structure 63

Psychoneurotics 6s

RACES and myths 81

Real parents 73

Reformer - 93

Remus 40

Replacement of father 67

Retaliation and revenge 66

Revenge and retaliation 66

Reversals 72

Revolt of hero 82

Revolutionary 93

River legends 46

Romulus 40

Romulus, modifications of 42

ST. GREGORY 19

Sam 21

Sargon myth 12

Sceaf 60

Scild Scefing 60

Senechoros 24

Sex and myth 65

Siegfried 93

Split personalities 84

Summary interpretation 79

Symbolic expression 69

TELEPHOS 21

Thebes 43

Theories of myths 1, 3

Tristan 38, 39

True bride 40

Twin myths 44

Types of reversal 77

Typical myth 61

Tyrant and father 76

100 OTTO RANK

PAGE

WATER dreams 7*

Water in myth 34

Wieland 55

Wolf dietrich 54

YOUTH and old age 64

ZAL 21

Zetos and Amphion 43

Zoroaster 5 1

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